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LITTLE DORRIT. 

0 

By CHARLES DICKENS. 


WITH ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATIONS 


By S. EYTINGE, Jr. 



'p'Z-'b 

q 


Gad’s Hill Place, Higham by Rochester, Kent, 
Second April, 1867. 

By a special arrangement made with me and my English Publishers (partners 
with me in the copyright of my works), Messrs. Ticknor and Fields, of Boston, 
have become the only authorized representatives in America of the whole series 
of my books. 

CHARLES DICKENS. 


# 


Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by 
TICKNOR AND FIELDS, 

in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 


University Press : Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 
Cambridge. 


PREFACE. 


■ ♦ 

I was occupied with this story during many working-hours of 
two years. I must have been very ill employed, if I could not leave 
its merits and demerits as a whole to express themselves on its 
being read as a whole. But, as it is not unreasonable to suppose 
that I may have held its various threads with a more continuous 
attention than any one else can have given to them during its desul- 
tory publication, it is not unreasonable to ask that the weaving may 
be looked at in its completed state, and with the pattern finished. 

If I might offer any apology for so exaggerated a fiction as the 
Barnacles and the Circumlocution Office, I would seek it in the com- 
mon experience of an Englishman, without presuming to mention 
the unimportant fact of my having done that violence to good man- 
ners, in the days of a Russian war, and of a Court of Inquiry at 
Chelsea. If I might make so bold as to defend that extravagant 
conception, Mr. Merdle, I would hint that it originated after the 
Railroad-share epoch, in the times of a certain Irish bank, and of 
one or two other equally laudable enterprises. If I were to plead 
anything in mitigation of the preposterous fancy that a bad design 
will sometimes claim to be a good and an expressly religious design, 
it would be the curious coincidents that such fancy was brought to 
its climax in these pages, in the days of the public examination of 
late Directors of a Royal British Bank. But I submit myself to 


IV 


PREFA CE. 


suffer judgment to go by default on all these counts, if need be, and 
to accept the assurance (on good authority) that nothing like them 
was ever known in this land. 

Some of my readers may have an interest in being informed 
whether or no any portions of the Marshalsea Prison are yet stand- 
ing. I, myself, did not know, until I was approaching the end of 
this story, when I went to look. I found the outer front court-yard, 
often mentioned here, metamorphosed into a butter shop ; and I 
then almost gave up every brick of the jail for lost. Wandering, 
however, down a certain adjacent “Angel Court, leading to Ber- 
mondsey, ” I came to “ Marshalsea Place ” : the houses in which I 
recognized, not only as the great block of the former prison, but as 
preserving the rooms that arose in my mind’s eye when I became 
Little Dorrit’s biographer. The smallest boy I ever conversed with, 
carrying the largest baby I ever saw, offered a supernaturally intelli- 
gent explanation of the locality in its old uses, and was very nearly 
correct. How this young Newton (for such I judge him to be) came 
by his information, I don’t know ; he was a quarter of a century too 
young to know anything about it of himself. I pointed to the win- 
dow of the room where Little Dorrit was born, and where her father 
lived so long, and asked him what was the name of the lodger who 
tenanted that apartment at present ? He said “Tom Pythick.” I 
asked him who was Tom Pythick? and he said, “Joe Pythick’s 
uncle.” 

A little farther on, I found the older and smaller wall, which used 
to enclose the pent-up inner prison where nobody was put, except 
for ceremony. But whosoever goes into Marshalsea Place, turning 
out of Angel Court, leading to Bermondsey, will find his feet on the 
very paving-stones of the extinct Marshalsea jail ; will see its nar- 
row yard to the right and to the left, very little altered if at all, 
except that the walls were lowered when the place got free ; will 


PREFA CE. 


v 


look upon the rooms in which the debtors lived ; and will stand 
among the crowding ghosts of many miserable years. 

In the Preface to Bleak blouse I remarked that I had never had 
so many readers. In the Preface to its next successor, Little Dor- 
rit, I have still to repeat the same words, deeply sensible of the 
affection and confidence that have grown up between us. 






0 























































































































CONTENTS 


❖ 


Book I. — Poverty. 


Chapter 


Page 


I. 

II. 

III. 

IV. 
V. 

VI. 

VII. 

VIII. 

IX. 

X. 

XI. 

XII. 

XIII. 

XIV. 
XV. 

XVI. 

XVII. 

XVIII. 

XIX. 

XX. 

XXI. 

XXII. 

XXIII. 

XXIV. 

XXV. 

XXVI. 

XXVII. 

XXVIII. 

XXIX. 

XXX. 

XXXI. 

XXXII. 

XXXIII. 

XXXIV. 

XXXV. 

XXXVI. 


Sun and Shadow . . 

Fellow-Travellers 

Home . 

Mrs. Flintwinch has a Dream 

Family Affairs * . 

The Father of the Marshalsea 

The Child of the Marshalsea ........ 

The Lock 

Little Mother . 

Containing the whole Science of Government . . 

Let loose ? 

Bleeding Heart Yard 

Patriarchal 

Little Dorrit’s Party , . . 

Mrs. Flintwinch has another Dream 

Nobody’s Weakness 

Nobody’s Rival 

Little Dorrit’s Lover 

The Father of the Marshalsea in two or three Relations 

Moving in Society 

Mr. Merdle’s Complaint . . . 

A Puzzle 

Machinery in Motion 

Fortune-Telling 

Conspirators and Others 

Nobody’s State of Mind 

Five-and-Twenty 

Nobody’s Disappearance 

Mrs. Flintwinch goes on Dreaming 

The Word of a Gentleman 

Spirit 

More Fortune-Telling . . 

Mrs. Merdle’s Complaint 

A Shoal of Barnacles . . . . . . 

What was behind Mr. Pancks on Little Dorrit’s Hand 
The Marshalsea becomes an Orphan 


i 


9 

16 

24 

26 

32 

39 

45 

5i 

59 

7i 

77 


83 

96 

103 

108 

116 

122 

128 


134 

142 

147 

153 

162 

171 

177 


185 

192 

197 


201 

211 

220 

225 

231 

237 

245 


CONTENTS. 


viii 


Book II. — Riches. 


Chapter 


Page 


I. 

II. 

III. 

IV. 
V. 

VI. 

VII. 

VIII. 

IX. 

X. 

XI. 

XII. 

XIII. 

XIV. 
XV. 


XVI. 

XVII. 

XVIII. 

XIX. 

XX. 

XXI. 

XXII. 

XXIII. 

XXIV. 

XXV. 

XXVI. 

XXVII. 

XXVIII. 

XXIX. 

XXX. 

XXXI. 

XXXII. 

XXXIII. 

XXXIV. 


Fellow-Travellers 

Mrs. General 

On the Road 

A Letter from Little Dorrit 

Something Wrong Somewhere 

Something Right Somewhere 

Mostly Prunes and Prism 

The Dowager Mrs. Gowan is reminded that it never does 
Appearance and Disappearance . . . . 

The Dreams of Mrs. Flintwinch thicken 

A Letter from Little Dorrit 

In which a Great Patriotic Conference is holden 

The Progress of an Epidemic 

Taking Advice . ■ 

No Just Cause or Impediment why these Two Persons should not 

be joined together 

Getting on 

Missing 

A Castle in the Air . 

The Storming of the Castle in the Air 

Introduces the Next 

The History of a Self-Tormentor 

Who passes by this Road so late ? 

Mrs. Affeiy makes a Conditional Promise respecting her Dreams 

The Evening of a Long Day 

The Chief Butler resigns the Seals of Office .... 

Reaping the Whirlwind 

The Pupil of the Marshalsea 

An Appearance in the Marshalsea 

A Plea in the Marshalsea 

Closing in 

Closed 

Going 

Going ! 

Gone 


250 

259 

261 

271 

273 

282 

291 

298 


3°5 

314 

318 

322 


330 

339 


346 

355 

360 

366 


37 ° 

379 

385 

390 

394 


402 

408 


4i3 


418 


427 

438 

443 

457 

463 

467 

473 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

[Engraved under the superintendence of A. V. S. Anthony.] 


I. Little Dorrit and her Father Frontispiece 

II. Rigaud and Cavalletto Page 6 

III. Mrs. Clennam and Arthur Clennam 28 

IV. Flora and Mr. F.’s Aunt 92 

V. Little Dorrit and Maggy 101 

VI. Mr. and Mrs. Flintwinch 108 

VII. Young John Chivery 124 

VIII. Frederick Dorrit 137 

IX. Mr. and Mrs. Meagles 192 

X. Mr. and Mrs. Henry Gowan 282 

XI. Prunes and Prism 291 

XII. The Merdle Party 322 

XIII. Mr. and Mrs. Plornish and John Edward Nandy . . . 332 

XIV. Mrs. Merdle, Mr. Sparkler, and Fanny .... 344 

XV. Miss Wade and Tattycoram 384 

XVI. Casby and Pancks 463 

























































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LITTLE DORRIT 


BOOK I . 

POVERTY. 


CHAPTER I. 

SUN AND SHADOW. 

Thirty years ago Marseilles lay 
burning in the sun, one day. 

A blazing sun upon a fierce August 
day was no greater rarity in Southern 
France then than at any other time, be- 
fore or since. Everything in Marseilles, 
and about Marseilles, had stared at 
the fervid sky, and been stared at in 
return, until a staring habit had be- 
come universal there. Strangers were 
stared out of countenance by star- 
ing white houses, staring white w r alls, 
staring white streets, staring tracts of 
arid road, staring hills from which ver- 
dure was burnt away. The only things 
to be seen not fixedly staring and glar- 
ing were the vines drooping under their 
load of grapes. These did occasionally 
} wink a little, as the hot air barely 
moved their faint leaves. 

There was no wind to make a ripple 
on the foul water within the harbor, or 
on the beautiful sea without. The line 
of demarcation between the two colors, 
black and blue, showed the point which 
the pure sea would not pass ; but it lay 
as quiet as the abominable pool, with 
which it never mixed. Boats without 
awnings were too hot to touc^u; ships 
blistered at their moorings ; the stones 
of the quays had not cooled, night or 
day, for months. Hindoos, Jlussians, 
Chinese, Spaniards, Portuguese, Eng- 
lishmen, Frenchmen, Genoese, Neapol- 
itans, Venetians, Greeks, Turks, de- 
scendants from all the builders of Babel, 
come to trade at Marseilles, sought the 


shade alike, — taking refuge in any hid- 
ing-place from a sea too intensely blue 
to be looked at, and a sky of purple, 
set with one great flaming jewel of 
fire. 

The universal stare made the eyes 
ache. Towards the distant line of Ital- 
ian coast, indeed, it was a little relieved 
by light clouds of mist, slowly rising 
from the evaporation of the sea ; but it 
softened nowhere else. Far away the 
staring roads, deep in dust, stared from 
the hillside, stared from the hollow, 
stared from the interminable plain. 
Far away the dusty vines overhanging 
wayside cottages, and the monotonous 
wayside avenues of parched trees-*with- 
out shade, drooped beneath the stare of 
earth and sky. So did the horses with 
drowsy bells, in long files of carts, 
creeping slowly towards the interior ; 
so did their recumbent drivers, when 
they were awake, which rarely hap- 
pened ; so did the exhausted laborers 
in the fields. Everything that lived or 
grew was oppressed by the glare ; except 
the lizard, passing swiftly over, rough 
stone walls, and the cicala, chirping his 
dry hot chirp, like a rattle. The very 
dust was scorched brown, and some- 
thing quivered in the atmosphere as if 
the air itself were panting. 

Blinds, shutters, curtains, awnings, 
were all closed and drawn to keep out 
the stare. .Grant it but a chink or key- 
hole, and it shot in like a white-hot 
arrow. The churches were the freest 
from it. To come out of the twilight of 
pillars and arches, — dreamily dotted 
with winking lamps, dreamily peopled 
with ugly old shadows piously dozing, 


2 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


spitting, and begging, — was to plnnge 
into a fiery river, and swim for life to 
the nearest strip of shade. So, with 
people lounging and lying wherever 
shade was, with but little hum of 
tongues or barking of dogs, with occa- 
sional jangling of discordant church- 
bells, and rattling of vicious drums, 
Marseilles, a fact to be strongly smelt and 
tasted, lay broiling in the sun one day. 

In Marseilles that day there was a 
villanous prison. In one of its cham- 
bers, so repulsive a place that even the 
obtrusive stare blinked at it, and left it 
to such refuse of reflected light as it 
could find for itself, were two men. 
Besides the two men, a notched and 
disfigured bench, immovable from the 
wall, with a draught-board rudely 
hacked upon it with a knife, a set of 
draughts made of old buttons and soup 
bones, a set of dominoes, two mats, and 
two or three wine bottles. That was 
all the chamber held, exclusive of rats 
and other unseen vermin, in addition 
to the seen vermin, the two men. 

It received such light as it got, 
through a grating of iron bars, fash- 
ioned like a pretty large window, by 
means of which it could be always in- 
spected from the gloomy staircase on 
which the grating gave. There was a 
broad strong ledge of stone to this 
grating, where the bottom of it was 
let into the masonry, three or four feet 
above the ground. Upon it, one of 
the two men lolled, half sitting and 
half lying, with his knees drawn up, 
and his feet and shoulders planted 
against the opposite sides of the aper- 
ture. The bars w r ere wide enough apart 
to admit of his thrusting his arm 
through to the elbbw ; and so he held 
on negligently, for his greater ease. 

A prison taint was on everything 
there. The imprisoned air, the im- 
prisoned light, the imprisoned damps, 
the imprisoned men, were all deterio- 
rated by confinement. As the captive 
men were faded and haggard, so the 
iron was rusty, the stone was slimy, the 
wood was rotten, the air was faint, the 
light w'as dim. Like a well, like a 
vault, like a tomb, the prison had no 
knowledge of the brightness outside ; 
and would have kept its polluted at- 


mosphere intact, in one of the spice 
islands of the Indian Ocean. 

The man who lay on the ledge of the 
grating was even chilled. He jerked 
his great cloak more heavily upon him 
by an impatient movement of one 
shoulder, and growled, “ To the Devil 
w'ith this Brigand of a Sun that never 
shines in here ! ” 

He was waiting to be fed ; looking 
sideways through the bars, that he 
might see the farther down the stairs, 
with much of the expression of a wild 
beast in similar expectation. But his 
eyes, too close together, were not so 
nobly set in his head as those of the 
king of beasts are in his, and they 
were sharp rather than bright, — pointed 
weapons with little surface to betray 
them. They had no depth or change ; 
they - glittered, and they opened and 
shut. So far, and waiving their use to 
himself, a clock-maker could have made 
a better pair. He had a hook nose, 
handsome after its kind, but too high 
between the eyes, by probably just as 
much as his eyes were too near to one 
another. For the rest, he was large and 
tall in frame, had thin lips, where his 
thick mustache showed them at all, 
and a quantity of dry hair, of no defin- 
able color, in its shaggy state, but shot 
with red. The hand with which he 
held the grating (seamed all over the 
back with ugly scratches newly healed) 
was unusually small and plump ; would 
have been unusually white, but for the 
prison grime. 

The other man w'as lying on the stone 
floor, covered with a coarse brown coat. 

“ Get up, pig ! ” growled the first. 
“ Don’t sleep when I am hungry.” 

“ It ’s all one, master,” said the pig, 
in a submissive manner, and not with- 
out cheerfulness : “ I can wake when I 
will, I can sleep when I will. It ’sail 
the same.” 

As he said it, he rose, shook himself, 
scratched himself, tied his brown coat 
loosely round his neck by the sleeves 
(he had previously used it as a cover- 
let), ancy^at down upon the pavement 
yawmingf with his back against the w r all 
opposite to the grating. 

*'• Say what the hour is,” grumbled 
the first man. 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


3 


“ The midday bells will ring — in 
forty minutes.” When he made the 
little pause, he had looked round the 
prison-room, as if for certain informa- 
tion. 

“You are a clock. How is it that 
you always know?”. 

“ How can I say ! I always know 
w'hat the hour is, and where I am. I 
was brought in here at night, and out of 
a boat, but I know where I am. See 
here! Marseilles Harbor,” — on his 
knees on the pavement, mapping it all 
out with a swarthy forefinger, — “ Tou- 
lon (where the galleys are), Spain over 
there, Algiers over there. Creeping 
away to the left here, Nice. Round by 
the Cornice to Genoa. Genoa Mole 
and Harbor. Quarantine Ground. 
City there; terrace - gardens blushing 
with the belladonna. Here, Porto Fino. 
Stand out for Leghorn. Out again for 
Civita Vecchia. So away to — hey! 
there ’s no room for Naples,” — he had 
got to the wall by this time, — “ but it ’s 
all one ; it ’s in there ! ” 

He remained on his knees, looking 
up at his fellow-prisoner with a lively 
look for a prison. A sunburnt, quick, 
lithe little man, though rather thickset. 
Ear-rings in his brown ears, white teeth 
lighting up his grotesque brown face, 
intensely black hair clustering about his 
brown throat, a ragged red shirt open 
at his brown breast. Loose, seaman- 
like trousers, decent shoes, a long red 
cap, a red sash round his waist, and a 
knife in it. 

“ Judge if I come back from Naples 
as I went! See here, my master! 
Civita Vecchia, Leghorn, Porto Fino, 
Genoa, Cornice, Off Nice (which is in 
there), Marseilles, you and me. The 
apartment of the jailer and his keys 
is where I put this thumb : and here 
at my wrist, they keep the national 
razor in its case, — the guillotine locked 
up.” 

The other man spat suddenly on the 
pavement and gurgled in his throat. 

Some lock below gurgled in its throat 
immediately afterwards, and> then a 
door clashed. Slow steps began as- 
cending the stairs ; the prattle of a 
sweet little voice mingled with the noise 
they made; and the prison-keeper ap- 


peared, carrying his daughter, three or 
four years old, and a basket. 

“ How goes the world this forenoon, 
gentlemen? My little one, you see, 
going round with me to have a peep 
at her father’s birds. Fie, then ! Look 
at the birds, my pretty, look at the 
birds.” 

He looked sharply at the birds him- 
self, as he . held the child up at the 
grate, especially at the little bird, whose 
activity he seemed to mistrust. “ I 
have brought your bread, Signor John 
Baptist,” said he (they all spoke in 
French, but the little man was an Ital- 
ian) ; “and if I might recommend you 
not to game — ” 

“You don’t recommend the mas- 
ter!” said John Baptist, showing his 
teeth as he smiled. # 

“O, but the master wins,” returned 
the jailer, with a passing look of no 
particular liking at the other man, 
“and you lose. It’s quite another 
thing. You get husky bread and sour 
drink by it ; and he gets sausage of 
Lyons, veal in savory jelly, white bread, 
strachino cheese, and good wine by it. 
Look at the birds, my pretty ! ” 

“Poor birds !” said the child. 

The fair little face, touched with 
divine compassion, as it peeped shrink- 
ingly through the grate, was like an 
angel’s in the prison. John Baptist 
rose and moved towards it, as if it had 
a good attraction for him. The other 
bird remained as before, except for an 
impatient glance at the basket. 

“ Stay ! ” said the jailer, putting his 
little daughter on the outer ledge of 
the grate, “she shall feed the birds. 
This big loaf is for Signor John Bap- 
tist. We must break it to get it 
through into the cage. So, there’s a 
tame bird, to kiss the little hand ! 
This sausage in a vine-leaf is for Mon- 
sieur Rigaud. Again — .this veal in 
savory jelly is for Monsieur Rigaud. 
Again — these three white little, loaves 
are for Monsieur Rigaud. Again, this 
cheese — again, this wine — again, this 
tobacco — all for Monsieur Rigaud. 
Lucky bird ! ” 

The child put all these things between 
the bars into the soft, smooth, well- 
shaped hand, with evident dread, — 


4 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


more than once drawing back her own, 
and looking at the man with her fair 
brow roughened into an expression 
half of fright and half of anger. Where- 
as, *she had put the lump of coarse bread 
into the swart, scaled, knotted hands 
of John Baptist (who had scarcely as 
much nail on his eight fingers and two 
thumbs as would have made out one for 
Monsieur Rigaud), with ready confi- 
dence ; and, when he kissed her hand, 
had herself passed it caressingly over 
his face. Monsieur Rigaud, indifferent 
to this distinction, propitiated the fa- 
ther by laughing and nodding at the 
daughter as often as she gave him any- 
thing ; and, so soon as he had all his 
viands about 'him in convenient nooks 
of the ledge on which he rested, began 
to eat with an ai^petite. 

When Monsieur Rigaud laughed, a 
change took place in his face, that was 
more remarkable than prepossessing. 
His mustache went up under his nose, 
and his nose came down over his mus- 
tache, in a very sinister and cruel manner. 

“ There ! ” said the jailer, turning his 
basket upside down to beat the crumbs 
out, “ I have expended all the money 
I received ; here is the note of it, and 
that ’s a thing accomplished. Monsieur 
Rigaud, as I expected yesterday, the 
President will look for the pleasure of 
your society at an hour after midday, 
to-day.” 

“To try me, eh?” said Rigaud, 
pausing, knife in hand and morsel in 
mouth. 

“You have said it. To try you.” 

“There is no news for me?” asked 
John Baptist, who had begun content- 
edly to munch his bread. 

The jailer shrugged his shoulders. 

“ Lady of mine ! Am I to lie here 
all my life, my father? ” 

“ What do I know ! ” cried the jailer, 
turning upon him with southern quick- 
ness, and gesticulating with both his 
hands and all his fingers, as if he were 
threatening to tear him to pieces. “ My 
friend, how is it possible for me to 
tell how long you are to lie here ? What 
do I know, John Baptist Cavalletto? 
Death of my life ! There are prisoners 
here sometimes, who are not in such a 
devil of a hurry to be tried.” 


He seemed to glance obliquely at 
Monsieur Rigaud in this remark ; but 
Monsieur Rigaud had already resumed 
his meal, though not with quite so quick 
an appetite as before. 

“ Adieu, my birds ! ” said the keeper 
of the prison, taking his pretty child in 
his arms, and dictating the words with 
a kiss. 

“ Adieu, my birds ! ” the pretty child 
repeated. 

Her innocent face looked back so 
brightly over his shoulder, as he walked 
away with her, singing her the song of 
the child’s game : 

“ Who passes by this road so late ? 
Compagnon de la Majolaine! 

Who passes by this road so late ? 

Always gay 1 " 

that John Baptist felt it a point of honor 
to reply at the grate, and in good time 
and tune, though a little hoarsely : 

“ Of all the king’s knights ’t is the flower, 
Compagnon de la Majolaine! 

Of all the king’s knights ’t is the flower, 
Always gay ! ” 

Which accompanied them so far down 
the few steep stairs, that the prison- 
keeper had to stop at last for his little 
daughter to hear the song out, and re- 
peat the Refrain while they were yet in 
sight. Then the child’s head disap- 
peared, and the prison-keeper’s head 
disappeared, but the little voice pro- 
longed the strain until the door clashed. 

Monsieur Rigaud, finding the listen- 
ing John Baptist in his way before the 
echoes had ceased (even the echoes 
were the weaker for imprisonment, 
and seemed to lag), reminded him with 
a push of his foot that he had better 
resume his own darker place. The lit- 
tle man sat down again upon the pave- 
ment, with the negligent ease of one 
who was thoroughly accustomed to pave- 
ments ; and placing three hunks of 
coarse bread before himself, and falling 
to upon a fourth, began contentedly to 
work his way through them, as if to 
clear them off were a sort of game. 

Perhaps he glanced at the Lyons 
sausage, and perhaps he glanced at the 
veal in savory jelly, but they were not 
there long, to make his mouth water ; 
Monsieur Rigaud soon despatched them, 
in spite of the President and Tribunal, 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


5 


and proceeded to suck his fingers as 
clean as he could, and to wipe them on 
his vine-leaves. Then, as he paused in 
his drink to contemplate his fellow- 
prisoner, his mustache went up, and 
his nose came down. 

“ How do you find the bread?” 

“ A little dry, but I have my old 
sauce here,” returned John Baptist, 
holding up his knife. 

“ How sauce ? ” 

“ I can cut my bread so — like a melon. 
Or so — like an omelette. Or so — like 
a fried fish. Or so — like Lyons sau- 
sage,” said John Baptist, demonstrating 
the various cuts on the bread he held, 
and soberly chewing what he had in his 
mouth. 

“ Here ! ” cried Monsieur Rigaud. 
“ You may drink. You may finish this.” 

It was no great gift, for there was 
mighty little wine left ; but Signor 
Cavalletto, jumping to his feet, received 
the bottle gratefully, turned it upside 
down at his mouth, and smacked his 
lips. 

“ Put the bottle by with the rest,” 
said Rigaud. 

The little man obeyed his orders, and 
stood ready to give him a lighted match ; 
for he was now rolling his tobacco into 
cigarettes, by the aid of little squares 
of paper which had been brought in 
with it. 

“ Here ! You may have one.” 

“ A thousand thanks, my master ! ” 
John Baptist said it in his own lan- 
guage, and with the quick conciliatory 
manner of his own countrymen. 

Monsieur Rigaud arose, lighted a 
cigarette, put the rest of his stock into 
a breast-pocket, and stretched himself 
out at full length upon the bench. 
Cavalletto sat down on the pavement, 
holding one of his ankles in each hand, 
and smoking peacefully. There seemed 
to be some uncomfortable attraction of 
Monsieur Rigaud’s eyes to the imme- 
diate neighborhood of that part of the 
pavement where the thumb had been 
in the plan. They were so drawn in 
that direction, that the Italian more 
than once followed them to and back 
from the pavement in some surprise.. 

“ What an infernal hole this is ! ” said 
Monsieur Rigaud, breaking a long pause. 


“ Look at the light of day. Day? the 
light of yesterday week, the light of six 
months ago, the light of six years ago. 
So slack and dead ! ” 

It came languishing down a square 
funnel that blinded a window in the 
staircase wall, through which the sky 
was never seen, — nor anything else. 

“Cavalletto,” said Monsieur Rigaud, 
suddenly - withdrawing his gaze from 
this funnel, to which they had both in- 
voluntarily turned their eyes, “ you 
know me for a gentleman?” 

“ Surely, surely ! ” 

“ How long have we been here ? ” 

“ I, eleven weeks, tomorrow night at 
midnight. You, nine weeks and three 
days, at five this afternoon.” 

“Have I ever done anything here? 
Ever touched the broom, or spread the 
mats, or rolled them up, or found the 
draughts, or collected the dominoes, or 
put my hand to any kind of work ? ” 

“ Never ! ” 

“ Have you ever thought of looking 
to me to do any kind of work? ” 

John Baptist answered with that pe- 
culiar back-handed shake of the right 
forefinger which is the most expressive 
negative in the Italian language. 

“ No ! You knew from the first mo- 
ment when you saw me here, that I was 
a gentleman ? ” 

“ Altro ! ” returned John Baptist, 
closing his eyes and giving his head a 
most vehement toss. The w'ord being, 
according to its Genoese emphasis, a 
confirmation, a contradiction, an asser- 
tion, a denial, a taunt, a compliment, a 
joke, and fifty other things, became in 
the present instance, with a significance 
beyond all power of written expression, 
our familiar English, “ I believe you !” 

“ Haha ! You are right ! A gen- 
tleman I am ! And a gentleman I ’ll 
live, and a gentleman I ’ll die ! It ’s 
my intent to be a gentleman. It ’s my 
game. Death of my soul, I play it out 
wherever I go ! ” 

He changed his posture to a sitting 
one, crying with a triumphant air, — 

“ Here I am ! See me ! Shaken 
out of destiny’s dice-box into the com- 
pany of a mere smuggler; — shut up 
with a poor little contraband trader, 
whose papers are wrong, and whom the 


6 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


police lay hold of besides, for placing 
his boat (as a means of getting beyond 
the frontier) at the disposition of other 
little people whose papers are wrong ; 
and he instinctively recognizes my posi- 
tion, even by this light and in this place. 
It’s well done! By Heaven ! I win, 
however the game goes.” 

Again his mustache went up, and 
his nose came down. 

“ What ’s the hour, now ? ” he asked, 
with a dry hot pallor upon him, rather 
difficult of association with merriment. 

“ A little half-hour after midday.” 

“ Good ! The President will have a 
gentleman before him soon. Come ! 
Shall I tell you on what accusation ? It 
must be now, or never, for I shall not 
return here. Either I shall go free, or 
I shall go to be made ready for shaving. 
You know where they keep the razor.” 

Signor Cavalletto took his cigarette 
from between his parted lips, and 
showed more momentary discomfiture 
than might have been expected. 

“ I am a,” — Monsieur Rigaud stood 
up to say it, — “I am a cosmopolitan 
gentleman. I own no particular coun- 
try. My father was Swiss, — Canton de 
Vaud. My mother was French by 
blood, English by birth. I myself was 
born in Belgium. I am a citizen of the 
world.” 

His theatrical air, as he stood with 
one arm on his hip, within the folds 
of his cloak, together with his manner 
of disregarding his companion and 
addressing the opposite wall instead, 
seemed to intimate that he was rehears- 
ing for the President, whose examina- 
tion he was shortly to undergo, rather 
than troubling himself merely to en- 
lighten so small a person as John Bap- 
tist Cavalletto. 

“ Call me five-and-thirty years of age. 
I have seen the world. I have lived 
here, and lived there, and lived like a 
gentleman everywhere. I have been 
treated and respected as a gentleman 
universally. If you try to prejudice me, 
by making out that I have lived by my 
wits, — how do your lawyers live, — your 
politicians, — your intriguers, — your 
men of the Exchange?” 

He kept his small smooth hand in con- 
stant requisition, as if it were a witness 


to his gentility, that had often done him 
good service before. 

“ Two years ago I came to Marseilles. 
I admit that I was poor ; I had been ill. 
When your lawyers, your politicians, 
your intriguers, your men of the Ex- 
change fall ill, and have not scraped 
money together, they become poor. I 
put up at the Cross of Gold, — kept 
then by Monsieur Henri Barronneau, 
— sixty-five at least, and in a failing 
state of health. I had lived in the 
house some four months, when Mon- 
sieur Henri Barronneau had the mis- 
fortune to die ; — at any rate, not a rare 
misfortune, that. It happens without 
any aid of mine, pretty often.” 

John Baptist having smoked his cigar- 
ette down to his fingers’ ends, Monsieur 
Rigaud had the magnanimity to throw 
him another. He lighted the second 
at the ashes of the first, and smoked on, 
looking sideways at his companion, 
who, preoccupied with his own case, 
hardly looked at him. 

“ Monsieur Barronneau left a widow. 
She was two - and - twenty. She had 
gained a reputation for beauty, and 
(which is often another thing) was beau- 
tiful. I continued to live at the Cross 
of Gold. I married Madame Barron- 
neau. It is not for me to say whether 
there was any great disparity in such a 
match. Here I stand with the contam- 
ination of a jail upon me ; but it is 
possible that you may think me better 
suited to her than her former husband 
was.” 

He had a certain air of being a hand- 
some man — which he was not ; and a 
certain air of being a well-bred man — 
which he was not. It was mere 
swagger and challenge ; but in this par- 
ticular, as in many others, blustering 
assertion goes for proof, half over the 
world. 

“Be it as it may, Madame Barron- 
neau approved of me. That is not to 
prejudice me I hope? ” 

His eye happening to light upon John 
Baptist with this inquiry, that little man 
briskly shook his head in the negative, 
and repeated in an argumentative tone 
under his breath, altro, altro, altro, al- 
tro, — an infinite number of times. 

“ Now came the difficulties of our 



RIGAUD AND CAVALLETTO 


















• - 



























































































































i 


























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w> 













' * 

' 






. 

. 

. 




















LITTLE DORRIT. 


7 


position. I am proud. I say nothing 
m defence of pride, but I am proud. It 
is also my character to govern. I can’t 
submit ; I must govern. Unfortunate- 
ly the property of Madame Rigaud was 
settled upon herself. Such was the in- 
sane act of her late husband. More 
unfortunately still, she had relations. 
When a wife’s relations interpose 
against a husband who is a gentleman, 
who is proud, and who must govern, 
the consequences are inimical to peace. 
There was yet another source of differ- 
ence between us. Madame Rigaud 
was unfortunately a little vulgar. I 
sought to improve her manners and 
ameliorate her general tone ; she (sup- 
ported in this likewise by her relations) 
resented my endeavors. Quarrels be- 
gan to arise between us ; and, propa- 
gated and exaggerated by the slanders 
of the relations of Madame Rigaud, to 
become notorious to the neighbors. It 
has been said that I treated Madame 
Rigaud with cruelty. I may have been 
seen to slap her face, — nothing more. 
I have a light hand ; and if I have been 
seen apparently to correct Madame 
Rigaud in that manner, I have done it 
almost playfully.” 

If the playfulness of Monsieur Rigaud 
were at all expressed by his smile at 
this point, the relations of Madame 
Rigaud might have said that they 
would have much preferred his correct- 
ing that unfortunate woman seriously. 

“ I am sensitive and brave. I do 
not advance it as a merit to be sensi- 
tive and brave, but it is my character. 
If the male relations of Madame Rigaud 
had put themselves forward openly, I 
should have known how to deal with 
them. They knew that, and their 
machinations were conducted in secret ; 
consequently, Madame Rigaud and I 
were brought into frequent and unfor- 
tunate collision. Even when I wanted 
any little sum of money for my personal 
expenses, I could not obtain it without 
collision, — and I too, a man whose char- 
acter it is to govern ! One night, Ma- 
dame Rigaud and myself were walking 
amicably — I may say like lovers — on 
a height overhanging the sea. An evil 
star occasioned Madame Rigaud to ad- 
vert to her relations ; I reasoned with 


her on that subject and remonstrated 
on the want of duty and devotion mani- 
fested in her allowing herself to be in- 
fluenced by their jealous animosity to- 
wards her husband. Madame Rigaud 
retorted, I retorted. Madame Rigaud 
grew warm ; I grew warm and pro- 
voked her. I admit it. Frankness is 
a part of my character. At length, 
Madame Rigaud, in an access of fury 
that I must ever deplore, threw herself 
upon me with screams of passion (no 
doubt those that were overheard at 
some distance), tore my clothes, tore 
my hair, lacerated my hands, trampled 
and trod the dust, and finally leaped 
over, dashing herself to death upon the 
rocks below. Such is the train of inci- 
dents which malice has perverted into 
my endeavoring to force from Madame 
Rigaud a relinquishment of her rights; 
and, on her persistence in a refusal to 
make the concession I required, strug- 
gling with her, — assassinating her ! ” 

He stepped aside to the ledge where 
the vine-leaves yet lay strewn about, 
collected two or three, and stood wiping 
his hands upon them, with his back to 
the light. 

“ Well,” he demanded after a silence, 
“ have you nothing to say to all that ? ” 

“ It’s ugly,” returned the little man, 
who had risen, and was brightening his 
knife upon his shoe^ws he leaned an 
arm against the wan; 

“ What do you mean ? ” 

John Baptist polished his knife in 
silence. 

“ Do you mean that I have not rep- 
resented the case correctly?” 

“Al-tro!” returned John Baptist. 
The word was an apology now, and 
stood for, “ O, by no means ! ” 

“What then?” 

‘ Presidents and tribunals are so prej- 
udiced.” 

“Well!” cried the other, uneasily 
flinging the end of his cloak over his 
shoulder with an oath, “ let them do 
their worst ! ” 

“Truly I think they will,” murmured 
John Baptist to himself, as he bent his 
head to put his knife in his sash. 

Nothing more was said on either 
side, though they both began walking 
to and fro, and necessarily crossed at 


8 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


every turn. Monsieur Rigaud some- 
times half stopped, as if he were going 
to put his case in a new light, or make 
some irate remonstrance ; but Signor 
Cavalletto continuing to go slowly to 
and fro at a grotesque kind of jog-trot 
pace, w'ith his eyes turned downward, 
nothing came of these inclinings. 

By and by the noise of the key in the 
lock arrested them both. The sound of 
voices succeeded, and the tread of feet. 
The door clashed, the voices and the 
feet came on, and the prison-keeper 
slowly ascended the stairs, followed by 
a guard of soldiers. 

“Now, Monsieur Rigaud,” said he, 
pausing for a moment at the grate, with 
his keys in his hand, “have the good- 
ness to come out.” 

“ I am to depart in state, I see?” 

“Why, unless you did,” returned the 
jailer, “ you might depart in so many 
pieces that it would be difficult to get 
you together again. There ’s a crowd, 
Monsieur Rigaud, and it doesn’t love 
you.” 

He passed on out of sight, and un- 
locked and unbarred a low door in the 
corner of the chamber. “Now,” said 
he, as he opened it and appeared with- 
in, “ come out.” 

There is no sort of whiteness in all 
the hues under the sun, at all like the 
whiteness of Monsieur Rigaud’s face as 
it was then. Neither is there any ex- 
pression of the human countenance at 
all like that expression, in every little 
line of which the frightened heart is 
seen to beat. Both are conventionally 
compared with death; but the differ- 
ence is the whole deep gulf between the 
struggle done, and the fight at its most 
desperate extremity. 

He lighted another of his paper ci- 
gars at his companion’s, put it tightly 
between his teeth, covered his head 
with a soft slouched hat ; threw the end 
of his cloak over his shoulder again, 
and walked out into the side gallery on 
■which the door opened, without tak- 
ing any further notice of Signor Ca- 
valletto. As to that little man himself, 
his whole attention had become ab- 
sorbed in getting near the door, and 
looking out at it. Precisely as a beast 
might approach the opened gate of his 


den and eye the freedom beyond, he 
passed those few moments in watching 
and peering, until the door was closed 
upon him. 

There was an officer in command of 
the soldiers ; a stout, serviceable, pro- 
foundly calm man, with his drawn 
sword in his hand, smoking a cigar. 
He very briefly directed the placing of 
Monsieur Rigaud in the midst of the 
party, put himself with consummate in- 
difference at their head, gave the word 
“March!” and so they all w'ent jing- 
ling down the staircase. The door 
clashed, — the key turned, — and a ray 
of unusual light, and a breath of unus- 
ual air, seemed to have passed through 
the jail, vanishing in a tiny wreath of 
smoke from the cigar. 

Still, in his captivity, like a lower 
animal, — like some impatient ape, or 
roused bear of the smaller species, — 
the prisoner, now left solitary, had 
jumped upon the ledge, to lose no 
glimpse of this departure. As he yet 
stood clasping the grate with both 
hands, an uproar broke upon his hear- 
ing ; yells, shrieks, oaths, threats, exe- 
crations, all comprehended in it, though 
(as in a storm) nothing but a raging 
swell of sound distinctly heard. 

Excited into a still greater resem- 
blance to a caged wild animal by his 
anxiety to know more, the prisoner 
leaped nimbly down, ran round the 
chamber, leaped nimbly up again, 
clasped the grate and tried to shake it, 
leaped down and ran, leaped up and 
listened, and never rested until the 
noise, becoming more and more dis- 
tant, had died away. How many bet- 
ter prisoners have worn their noble 
hearts out so; no man thinking of it; 
not even the beloved of their souls 
realizing it ; great kings and governors, 
who had made them captive, careering 
in the sunlight jauntily, and men cheer- 
ing them on. Even the said great per- 
sonages dying in bed, making exem- 
plary ends and sounding speeches ; and 
polite history, more servile than their 
instruments, embalming them ! 

At last John Baptist, now able to 
choose his own spot within the compass 
of those walls for the exercise of his 
faculty of going to sleep when he would, 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


9 


lay down upon the bench, with his face 
turned over on his crossed arms, and 
slumbered. In his submission, in his 
lightness, in hjs good-humor, in his 
short-lived passion, in his easy con- 
tentment with hard bread and hard 
stones, in his ready sleep, in his fits 
and starts altogether, a true son of the 
land that gave him birth. 

The wide stare stared itself out for 
one while ; the sun went down in a red, 
green, golden glory ; the stars came 
out in the heavens, and the fire-flies 
mimicked them in the lower air, as men 
may feebly imitate the goodness of a 
better order of beings ; the long, dusty 
roads and the interminable plains were 
in repose ; and so deep a hush was on 
the sea that it scarcely whispered of the 
time when it shall give up its dead. 


CHAPTER II. 

FELLOW-TRAVELLERS. 

“ No more of yesterday’s howling 
over yonder to-day, sir, is there ? ” 

“ I have heard none.” 

“ Then you may be sure there is 
none. When these people howl, they 
howl to be heard.” 

“ Most people do, I suppose.” 

“ Ah ! But these people are always 
howling. Never happy otherwise.” 

“Do you mean the Marseilles peo- 
ple ? ” 

“ I mean the French people. They 
’re always at it. As to Marseilles, we 
know, what Marseilles is. It sent the 
most insurrectionary tune into the world 
that was ever composed. It couldn’t 
exist without allonging and marshong- 
ing to something or other, — victory or 
death, or blazes or something.” 

The speaker, with a whimsical good- 
humor upon him all the time, looked 
over the parapet wall with the greatest 
disparagement of Marseilles ; and, tak- 
ing up a determined position by putting 
his hands in his pockets and rattling 
his money at it, apostrophized it with 
a short laugh. 

“ Allong and marshong, indeed. It 
would be more creditable to you, I 


think, to let other people allong and 
marshong about their lawful business, 
instead of shutting ’em up in quaran- 
tine 1 ” 

“ Tiresome enough,” said the other. 
“ But we shall be out to-day.” 

“ Out to-day ! ” repeated the first. 
“ It ’s almost an aggravation of the 
enormity that we shall be out to-day. 
Out! What have we ever been m 
for?” 

“For no very strong reason, I must 
say. But as we come from the East, 
and as the East is the country of the 
plague — ” 

“ The plague ! ” repeated the other. 
“ That ’s my grievance. I have had 
the plague continually ever since I 
have been here. I am like a sane man 
shut up in a madhouse. I can’t stand 
the suspicion of the thing. I came 
here as well as ever I was in my life; 
but to suspect me of the plague is to 
give me the plague. And I have had 
it ; and I have got it.” 

“You bear it very well, Mr. Mea- 
gles,” said the second speaker, smil- 
ing. 

“ No. If you knew the real state of 
the case, that ’s the last observation you 
would think of making. I have been 
waking up, night after night, and say- 
ing, now I have got it, now it has de- 
veloped itself, now I am in for it, now 
these fellows are making out their case 
for their precautions. Why, I ’d as soon 
have a spit put through me, and be 
stuck upon a card in a collection of bee- 
tles, as lead the life I have been lead- 
ing here.” 

“Well, Mr. Meagles, say no more 
about it, now it ’s over,” urged a cheer- 
ful feminine voice. 

“ Over ! ” repeated Mr. Meagles, who 
appeared (though without any ill-nature) 
to be in that peculiar state of mind in 
which the last word spoken by anybody 
else is a new injury, — “ over ! and why 
should I say no more about it because 
it ’s over? ” 

It was Mrs. Meagles who had spoken 
to Mr. JMeagles ; and Mrs. Meagles 
was, like Mr. Meagles, comely and 
healthy, with a pleasant English face 
which had been looking at homely 
things for five-and-fifty years or more, 


IO 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


and shone with a bright reflection of 
them. 

“There! Never mind, father, never 
mind!” said Mrs. Meagles. “For 
goodness’ sake content yourself with 
Pet.” 

“With Pet? ’’ repeated Mr. Meagles 
in his injured vein. Pet, however, being 
close behind him, touched him on the 
shoulder, and Mr. Meagles immediately 
forgave Marseilles from the bottom of 
his heart. 

Pet was about twenty. A fair girl 
with rich brown hair hanging free in 
natural ringlets. A lovely girl, with a 
frank face, and wonderful eyes ; so 
large, so soft, so bright, set to such per- 
fection in her kind good head. She 
was round and fresh and dimpled and 
spoilt, and there was in Pet an air of 
timidity and dependence which was the 
best weakness in the world, and gave 
her the only crowning charm a girl so 
pretty and pleasant could have been 
without. 

“ Now, I ask you,” said Mr. Meagles 
in the blandest confidence, falling back 
a step himself, and handing his daugh- 
ter a step forward to illustrate his ques- 
tion, — “I ask you simply as between 
man and man, you know, did you ever 
hear of such damned nonsense as put- 
ting Pet in quarantine ? ” 
v “ It has had the result of making even 
quarantine enjoyable.” 

“ Come ! ” said Mr. Meagles, “that ’s 
something to be sure. I am obliged to 
you for that remark. Now, Pet, my 
darling, you had better go along with 
mother and get ready for the boat. 
The officer of health, and a variety of 
humbugs in cocked hats, are coming off 
to let us out of this at last ; and all we 
jail-birds are to breakfast together in 
something approaching to a Christian 
style again, before we take wing for our 
different destinations. Tattvcoram, stick 
you close to your young mistress.” 

He spoke to a handsome girl with 
lustrous dark hair and eyes, and very 
neatly dressed, who replied with a half 
courtesy as she passed off in the train of 
Mrs. Meagles and Pet. They crossed 
the bare scorched terrace, all three to- 
gether, and disappeared through a star- 
ing white archway. Mr. Meagles’s com- 


panion, a grave, dark man of forty, still 
stood looking towards this archway after 
they were gone ; until Mr. Meagles 
tapped him on the arm. 

“ I beg your pardon,” said he, start- 
ing. 

“ Not at all,” said Mr. Meagles. 

They took one silent turn backward 
and forward in the shade of the wall, 
getting, at the height on which the 
quarantine barracks are placed, what 
cool refreshment of sea breeze there 
was, at seven in the morning. Mr. 
Meagles’s companion resumed the con- 
versation. 

“ May I ask you,” he said, “what is 
the name of — ” 

“ Tattycoram? ” Mr. Meagles struck 
in. “ I have not the least idea.” 

“ I thought,” said the other, 
“that — ” 

“Tattycoram?” suggested Mr. Mea- 
gles again. 

“ Thank you, — that Tattycoram was 
a name ; and I have several times won- 
dered at the oddity of it.” 

“ Why, the fact is,” said Mr. Mea- 
gles, “Mrs. Meagles and myself are, 
you see, practical people.” 

“That you have frequently men- 
tioned in the course of the agreeable 
and interesting conversations we have 
had together, walking up and down on 
these stones,” said the other, with a 
half-smile breaking through the gravity 
of his dark face. 

“ Practical people. So one day, five 
or six years ago now, when we took Pet 
to church at the Foundling, — you have 
heard of the Foundling Hospital in 
London ? Similar to the Institution for 
the Found Children in Paris?” 

“ I have seen it.” 

“ Well ! One day when we took Pet 
to church there to hear the music, — 
because, as practical people, it is the 
business of our lives to show her every- 
thing that we think can please her, — 
mother (my usual name for Mrs. Mea- 
gles) began to cry so, that it was neces- 
sary to take her out. ‘ What ’s the mat- 
ter, mother?’ said I, when we had 
brought her a little round ; ‘ you are 
frightening Pet, my dear.’ ‘Yes, I 
know that, father,’ says mother, ‘ but 
I think it ’s through my loving her so 


LITTLE DORRIT 


ii 


much, that it ever came into my head.* 
* That ever what came into your head, 
mother?’ ‘ O dear, dear!’ cried 
mother, breaking out again, ‘ when I 
saw all those children ranged tier above 
tier, and appealing from the father none 
of them has ever known on earth, to 
the great Father of us all in Heaven, 
I thought, does any wretched mother 
ever come here, and look among those 
young faces, wondering which is the 
poor child she brought into this forlorn 
world, never through all its life to know 
her love, her kiss, her face, her voice, 
even her name ! ’ Now that was prac- 
tical in mother, and I told her so. I 
said, * Mother, that ’s what I call prac- 
tical in you, my dear.’ ” 

The other, not unmoved, assented. 

“ So I said next day : ‘ Now, mother, 
I have a proposition to make that I 
think you ’ll approve of. Let us take 
one of those same children to be a little 
maid to Pet. We are practical people. 
So if we should find her temper a little 
defective, or any of her ways a little 
wide of ours, we shall know what we 
have to take into account. We shall 
know what an immense deduction must 
be made from all the influences and 
experiences that have formed us, — no 
parents, no child brother or sister, no 
individuality of home, no Glass Slipper, 
or Fairy Godmother.’ And that ’s the 
way we came by Tattycoram.” 

“ And the name itself — ” 

“ By George ! ” said Mr. Meagles, 
“ I was forgetting the name itself. 
Why, she was called in the Institution, 
Harriet Beadle, — an arbitrary name, of 
course. Now Harriet we changed into 
Hatty, and then into Tatty, because, as 
practical people, we thought even a 
playful name might be a new thing to 
her. and might have a softening and af- 
fectionate kind of effect, don’t you see? 
As to Beadle, that I need n’t say was 
wholly out of the question. If there is 
anything that is not to be tolerated on 
any terms, anything that is a type of 
jack-in-office insolence and absurdity, 
anything that represents in coats, waist- 
coats, and big sticks, our English hold- 
ing-on by nonsense, after every one 
has found it out, it is a beadle. You 
have n’t seen a beadle lately ? ” 


“ As an Englishman, who has been 
more than twenty years in China, no.” 

“Then,” said Mr. Meagles, laying his 
forefinger on his companion’s breast 
with great animation, “don’t you see a 
beadle, now, if you can help it. When- 
ever I see a beadle in full fig, coming 
down a street on a Sunday at the head 
of a charity school, I am obliged to 
turn and run away, or I should hit him. 
The name of Beadle being out of the 
question, and the originator of the In- 
stitution for these poor foundlings hav- 
ing been a blessed creature of the name 
of Coram, we gave that name to Pet’s 
little maid. At one time she was Tatty 
and at one time she was Coram, until 
we got into a way of mixing the two 
names together, and now she is always 
Tattycoram.” 

“ Your daughter,” said the other, 
when they had taken another silent turn 
to and fro, and after standing for a mo- 
ment at the wall glancing down at the 
sea, had resumed their walk, “is your 
only child, I know, Mr. Meagles. May 
I ask you. — in no impertinent curios- 
ity, but because I have had so much 
pleasure in your society, may never in 
this labyrinth of a world exchange a 
quiet word with you again, and wish to 
preserve an accurate remembrance of 
you and yours, — may I ask you, if I 
have not gathered from your good wife 
that you have had other children ?” 

“No. No,” said Mr. Meagles. 
“ Not exactly other children. One 
other child.” 

“ I am afraid I have inadvertently 
touched upon a tender theme.” 

“Never mind,” said Mr. Meagles. 
“ If I am grave about it, I am not at 
all sorrowful. It quiets me for a mo- 
ment, but does not make me unhappy. 
Pet had a twin sister who died •hen 
we could just see her eyes — exaefly 
like Pet’s — above the table, as she 
stood on tiptoe holding by it.” 

“Ah ! indeed, indeed? ” 

“Yes, and being practical people, a 
result has gradually sprung up in the 
minds of Mrs. Meagles and myself 
which perhaps you may — or perhaps 
ou may not — understand. Pet and 
er baby sister were so exactly alike, 
and so completely one, that in our 


12 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


thoughts we have never been able to 
separate them since. It would be of 
no use to tell us that our dead child was 
a mere infant. We have changed that 
child according to the changes in the 
child spared to us, and always with us. 
As Pet has grown, that child has grown ; 
as Pet has become more sensible and 
womanly, her sister has become more 
sensible and womanly, by just the same 
degrees. It would be as hard to con- 
vince me that if I was to pass into the 
other world to-morrow, I should not, 
through the mercy of God, be received 
there by a daughter, just like Pet, as to 
persuade me that Pet herself is not a 
reality at my side.” 

“ I understand you,” said the other, 
gently. 

“As to her,” pursued her father, 
“the sudden loss of her little picture 
and playfellow, and her early associa- 
tion with that mystery in which we all 
have our equal share, but which is not 
often so forcibly presented to a child, 
has necessarily had some influence on 
her character. Then, her mother and 
I were not young when we married, 
and Pet has always had a sort of grown- 
up life with us, though we have tried to 
adapt ourselves to her. We have been 
advised more than once, when she has 
been a little ailing, to change climate 
and air for her as often as we could, — 
especially at about this time of her life, 
— and to keep her amused. So, as I 
have no need to stick at a bank-desk 
now (though I have been poor enough 
in my time I assure you, or I should 
have married Mrs. Meagles long be- 
fore), we go trotting about the world. 
This is how you found us staring at 
the N ile, and the Pyramids, and the 
Sphipxes, and the Desert, and all the 
-rest it ; and this is how Tattycoram 
^wll-ne a greater traveller in course of 
time than Captain Cook.” 

“ I thank you,” said the other, “very 
heartily for your confidence.” 

“ Don’t mention it,” returned Mr. 
Meagles. “ I am sure you are quite 
welcome. And now, Mr. Clennam, 
perhaps I may ask you, whether you 
have yet come to a decision where to go 
next? ” 

“ Indeed, no. I am such a waif and 


stray everywhere, that I am liable to be 
drifted where any current may set.” 

“ It ’s extraordinary to me, — if you ’ll 
excuse my freedom in saying so, — that 
you don’t go straight to London,” said 
Mr. Meagles, in the tone of a confiden- 
tial adviser. 

“ Perhaps I shall.” 

“ Ay ! But I mean with a will.” 

“ I have no will. That is to say,” he 
colored a little, “ next to none that I 
can put in action now. Trained by 
main force ; broken, not bent ; heavily 
ironed with an object on which I was 
never consulted and which was never 
mine ; shipped away to the other end of 
the world before I was of age, and ex- 
iled there until my father’s death there, 
a year ago ; always grinding in a mill I 
always hated ; what is to be expected 
from me in middle-life ? Will, purpose, 
hope ? All those lights were extin- 
guished before I could sound the 
words.” 

“ Light ’em up again ! ” said Mr. 
Meagles. 

“Ah! easily said. I am the son, 
Mr. Meagles, of a hard father and 
mother. I am the only child of parents 
who weighed, measured, and priced 
everything ; for whom what could not 
be weighed, measured, and priced had 
no existence. Strict people as the 
phrase is, professors of a stern religion, 
their very religion was a gloomy sacri- 
fice of tastes and sympathies that were 
never their own, offered up as a part of 
a bargain for the security of their pos- 
sessions. Austere faces, inexorable dis- 
cipline, penance in this world and ter- 
ror in the next, — nothing graceful or 
gentle anywhere, and the void in my 
cowed heart everywhere. — this was my 
childhood, if I may so misuse the word 
as to apply it to such a beginning of 
life.” 

“ Really though ? ” said Mr. Meagles, 
made very uncomfortable, by the pic- 
ture offered to his imagination. “ That 
was a tough commencement. But 
come ! You must now study, and profit 
by all that lies beyond it, like a practi- 
cal man.” 

“ If the people who are usually called 
practical were practical in your direc- 
tion— ” 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


i3 


“ Why, so they are ! ” said Mr. 
Meagles. 

“ Are they indeed ? ” 

“ Well, I suppose so,” returned Mr. 
Meagles, thinking about it. “Eh? 
One can but be practical, and Mrs. 
Meagles and myself are nothing else.” 

“ My unknown course is easier and 
more hopeful than I had expected to 
find it then,” said Glennam, shaking 
his head with his grave smile. 
“Enough of me. Here is the boat!” 

The boat was filled with the cocked 
hats to which Mr. Meagles entertained 
a national objection ; and the wearers 
of those cocked hats landed and came 
up the steps, and all the impounded 
travellers congregated together. There 
was then a mighty production of papers 
on the part of the cocked hats, and a 
calling over of names, and great work 
of signing, sealing, stamping, inking, 
and sanding, with exceedingly blurred, 
gritty, and undecipherable results. Fi- 
nally, everything was done according to 
rule, and the travellers were at liberty 
to depart whithersoever they would. 

They made little account of stare and 
glare, in the new pleasure of recovering 
their freedom, but flitted across the 
harbor in gay boats, and reassembled 
at a great hotel, whence the sun was 
excluded by closed lattices, and where 
bare paved floors, lofty ceilings, and 
resounding corridors tempered the in- 
tense heat. There, a great table in a 
great room was soon profusely covered 
with a superb repast : and the quar- 
antine quarters became bare indeed, 
remembered among dainty dishes, 
southern fruits, cooled wines, flowers 
from Genoa, snow from the mountain- 
tops, and all the colors of the rainbow 
flashing in the mirrors. 

“ But I bear those monotonous walls 
no ill-will now,” said Mr. Meagles. 
“ One always begins to forgive a place 
as soon as it ’s left behind ; I dare say 
a prisoner begins to relent towards his 
prison, after he is let out.” 

They were about thirty in company, 
and all talking ; but necessarily in 
groups. Father and Mother Meagles 
sat with their daughter between them, 
the last three on one side of the table ; 
on the opposite side sat Mr. Clennam ; 


a tall French gentleman with raven hair 
and beard, of a swart and terrible, not 
to say genteelly diabolical aspect, but 
who had shown himself the mildest of 
men; and" a handsome young English- 
woman travelling quite alone, who had 
a proud observant face, and had either 
withdrawn herself from the rest or been 
avoided by the rest, — nobody, herself 
excepted perhaps, could have quitedecid- 
ed which. The rest of the party were 
of the usual materials. Travellers on 
business, and travellers for pleasure ; 
officers from India on leave ; merchants 
in the Greek and T urkey trades ; a 
clerical English husband in a meek 
strait-waistcoat, on a wedding trip with 
his young wife ; a majestic English 
mamma and papa, of the patrician or- 
der, with a family of three growing-up 
daughters, who were keeping a journal 
for the confusion of their fellow-crea- 
tures ; and a deaf old English mother 
tough in travel, with a very decided- 
ly grown-up daughter indeed, which 
daughter went sketching about the uni- 
verse in the expectation of ultimately 
toning herself off into the married 
state. 

The reserved Englishwoman took up 
Mr. Meagles in his last remark. 

“ Do you mean that a prisoner for- 
gives his prison?” said she, slowly and 
with emphasis. 

“ That was my speculation, Miss 
W ade. I don’t pretend to know positive- 
ly how a prisoner might feel. I never 
was one before.” 

“ Mademoiselle doubts,” said the 
French gentleman in his own language, 

“ its being so easy to forgive ? ” 

“I do.” 

Pet had to translate this passage to 
Mr. Measles, who never by any acci- 
dent acquired any knowledge whatever v 
of the language of any country ^injo 
which he travelled. “ O,” said h^^ 
“ dear me ! But that ’s a pity, is n't 
it? ” 

“That I am not credulous?” said 
Miss Wade. 

“Not exactly that. Put it another 
way. That you can’t believe it easy to 
forgive.” 

“My experience,” she quietly re- 

turned, “has been correcting my belief 


14 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


in many respects, for some years. It is 
our natural progress, I have heard.” 

“ Well, well ! But it ’s not natural to 
bear malice, I hope?” said Mr. Mea- 
gles, cheerily. 

“ If I had been shut up in any place 
to pine and suffer, I should always hate 
that place and wish to burn it down, 
or raze it to the ground. I know no 
more.” 

“Strong, sir?” said Mr. Meagles to 
the F renchman ; it being another of his 
habits to address individuals of all 
nations in idiomatic English, with a 
perfect conviction that they were bound 
to understand it somehow. “ Rather 
forcible in our fair friend, you ’ll agree 
with me, I think?” 

The French gentleman courteously 
replied, “ Plait-il ? ” To which Mr. 
Meagles returned with much satisfac- 
tion, “You are right. My opinion.” 

The breakfast beginning by and by 
to languish, Mr. Meagles made the 
company a speech. It was short 
enough and sensible enough, consider- 
ing that it was a speech at all, and 
hearty. It merely went to the effect 
that as they had all been thrown togeth- 
er by chance, and had all preserved a 
good understanding together, and were 
now about to disperse, and were not 
likely ever to find themselves all togeth- 
er again, what could they do better than 
bid farewell to one another, and give 
one another good-speed, in a simulta- 
neous glass of cool champagne all round 
the table? It was done, and with a 
general shaking of hands the assembly 
broke up forever. 

The solitary young lady all this time 
had said no more. She rose with the 
rest, and silently withdrew to a remote 
corner of the great room, where she sat 
herself on a couch in a window, seem- 
j&g to watch the reflection of the water, 

it made a silver quivering on the 
bars of the lattice. She sat turned away 
from the whole length of the apartment 
as if she were lonely of her own haughty 
choice. And yet it would have been as 
difficult as ever to say, positively, wheth- 
er she avoided the rest or was avoided. 

The shadow in which she sat, falling 
like a gloomy veil across her forehead, 
accorded very well with the character of 


her beauty. One could hardly see the 
face, so still and scornful, set off by the 
arched dark eyebrows, and the folds of 
dark hair, without wondering what its 
expression would be if a change came 
over it. That it could soften or relent, 
appeared next to impossible. That it 
could deepen into anger or any extreme 
of defiance, and that it must change in 
that direction when it changed at all, 
would have been its peculiar impression 
upon most observers. It was dressed and 
trimmed into no ceremony of expression. 
Although not an open face, there was 
no pretence in it. I am self-contained 
and self-reliant ; your opinion is nothing 
to me ; I have no interest in you, care 
nothing for you, and see and hear you 
with indifference, — this it said plainly. 
It said so in the proud eyes, in the 
lifted nostril, in the handsome, but com- 
pressed and even cruel mouth. Cover 
either two of those channels of expres- 
sion, and the third would have said so 
still. Mask them all, and the mere 
turn of the head would have shown an 
unsubduable nature. 

Pet had moved up to her (she had 
been the subject of remark among her 
family and Mr. Clennam, who were 
now the only other occupants of the 
room), and was standing at her side. 

“Are you” — she turned her eyes, 
and Pet faltered — “expecting any one 
to meet you here, Miss Wade? ” 

“I? No.” ' 

“ Father is sending to the Poste Res- 
tante. Shall he have the pleasure of 
directing the messenger to ask if there 
are any letters for you ? ” 

“ I thank him, but I know there can 
be none.” 

“We are afraid,” said Pet, sitting 
down beside her, shyly and half ten- 
derly, “that you will feel quite deserted 
w'hen we are all gone.” 

“ Indeed ! ” 

“Not,” said Pet, apologetically and 
embarrassed by her eyes, — “not, of 
course, that we are any company to you, 
or that we have been able to be so, or 
that we thought you wished it.” 

“ I have not intended to make it 
understood that I did wish it.” 

“No. Of course. But, — in short,” 
said Pet, timidly touching her hand as 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


15 


it lay impassive on the sofa between 
them, “ will you not allow father to 
render you any slight assistance or ser- 
vice ? He will be very glad.” 

“ Very glad,” said Mr. Meagles, 
coming forward with his wife and Clen- 
nam. “ Anything short of speaking the 
language, I shall be delighted to under- 
take, 1 am sure.” 

“ I am obliged to you,” she returned, 
“ but my arrangements are made, and I 
prefer to go my own way in my own 
manner.” 

“Do you?” said Mr. Meagles, to 
himself, as he surveyed her with a 
puzzled look. “Weill There ’s char- 
acter in that, too.” 

“ I am not much used to the society 
of young ladies, and I am afraid I may 
not show my appreciation of it as others 
might. A pleasant journey to you. 
Good by ! ” 

She would not have put out her hand, 
it seemed, but that Mr. Meagles put 
out his so straight before her, that she 
could not pass it. She put hers in it, 
and it lay there just as it had lain upon 
the couch. 

“ Good by ! ” said Mr. Meagles. 
“ This is the last good by upon the list, 
for mother and I have just said it to 
Mr. Clennam here, and he only waits 
to say it to Pet. Good by ! We may 
never meet again.” 

“ In our course through life we shall 
meet the people who are coming to 
meet us, from many strange places, and 
by many strange roads,” was the com- 
posed reply ; “ and what it is set to us 
to do to them, and what it is set to 
them to do to us will all be done.” 

There was something in the manner 
of these words that jarred upon Pet’s 
ear. It implied that what was to be 
done was necessarily evil, and it caused 
her to say in a whisper, “ O father ! ” 
and to shrink childishly in her spoilt 
way, a little closer to him. This was 
not lost on the speaker. 

“Your pretty daughter,” she said, 
“ starts to think of such things. Yet,” 
looking full upon her, “ you may be 
sure that there are men and women al- 
ready on their road, who have their 
business to do with you , and who will 
do it. Of a certainty they will do it. 


They may be coming hundreds, thou- 
sands, of miles over the sea there ; they 
may be close at hand now ; they may 
be coming, for anything you know, or 
anything you can do to prevent it, from 
the vilest sweepings of this very town.” 

With the coldest of farewells, and 
with a certain worn expression on her 
beauty that gave it, though scarcely yet 
in its prime, a wasted look, she left the 
room. 

Now there were many stairs and pas- 
sages that she had to traverse in pass- 
ing from that part of the spacious house 
to the chamber she had secured for her 
own occupation. When she had almost 
completed the journey, and was passing 
along the gallery in which her room 
was, she heard an angry sound of mut- 
tering and sobbing. A door stood 
open, and within she saw the attendant 
upon the girl she had just left, — the 
maid with the curious name. 

She stood still, to look at this maid. 
A sullen, passionate girl ! Her rich 
black hair was all about her face, her 
face was flushed and hot, and as she 
sobbed and raged, she plucked at her 
lips with an unsparing hand. 

“ Selfish brutes ! ” said the girl, sob- 
bing and heaving between whiles. “Not 
caring what becomes of me ! Leaving 
me here hungry and thirsty and tired, 
to starve, for anything they care ! 
Beasts ! Devils 1 Wretches 1 ” 

“My poor girl, what is the matter? ” 

She looked up suddenly, with red- 
dened eyes, and with her hands sus- 
pended, in the act of pinching her neck, 
freshly disfigured with great scarlet 
blots. “ It ’s nothing to you what ’s 
the matter. It don’t signify to any 
one.” 

“ O yes, it does ; I am sorry to see 
you so.” 

“You are not sorry,” said the girl. 
“You are glad. You know you are glad; 
I never was like this but twice, over in 
the quarantine yonder ; and both times 
you found me. I am afraid of you.” 

“ Afraid of me ? ” 

“Yes. You seem to come like my 
own anger, my own malice, my own — 
whatever it is — I don’t know what it 
is. But I am ill-used, I am ill-used, I 
am ill-used ! ” Here the sobs and the 


i6 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


tears, and the tearing hand, which had 
all been suspended together since the 
first surprise, went on together anew. 

The visitor stood looking at her with 
a strange, attentive smile. It was won- 
derful to see the fury of the contest in 
the girl, and the bodily struggle she 
made as if she were rent by the de- 
mons of old. 

“ I am younger than she is by two 
or three years, and yet it ’s me that 
looks after her, as if I was old, and it ’s 
she that ’s always petted and called 
Baby ! I detest the name. I hate her. 
They make a fool of her, they spoil her. 
She thinks of nothing but herself, she 
thinks no more of me than if I was a 
stock and a stone ! ” So the girl went 
on. 

“ You must have patience.” 

“ I won't have patience ! ” 

“If they take much care of them- 
selves, and little or none of you, you 
must not mind it.” 

“ I will mind it ! ” 

“ Hush ! Be more prudent. You 
forget your dependent position.” 

“ I don’t care for that. I ’ll run away. 
I ’ll do some mischief. I won’t bear it ; 
I can it bear it ; I shall die if I try to 
bear it 1 ” 

The observer stood with her hand 
upon her own bosom, looking at the 
girl, as one afflicted with a diseased 
part might curiously watch the dissec- 
tion and exposition of an analogous 
case. 

The girl raged and battled with all 
the force of her youth and fulness of 
’life, until by little and little her pas- 
sionate exclamations trailed off into 
broken murmurs as if she were in pain. 
By corresponding degrees she sank into 
a chair, then upon her knees, then upon 
the ground beside the bed, drawing 
the coverlet with her, half to hide her 
shamed head and wet hair in it, and 
half, as it seemed, to embrace it, rather 
than have nothing to take to her re- 
pentant breast. 

“ Go away from me, go away from 
me ! When my temper comes upon 
me, I am mad. I know I might keep 
it off if I only tried hard enough, and 
sometimes I do try hard enough, and 
at other times I don’t and won’t. What 


have I said! I knew when I said it, 
it was all lies. They think I am being 
taken care of somewhere, and have all 
I want. They are nothing but good to 
me. I love them dearly ; no people 
could ever be kinder to a thankless 
creature than they always are to me. 
Do, do go away, for I am afraid of you. 
I am afraid of myself w'hen I feel my 
temper coming, and I am as' much 
afraid of you. Go away from me, and 
let me pray and cry myself better ! ” 
The day passed on ; and again the 
wide stare stared itself out ; and the 
hotnightwason Marseilles; and through 
it the caravan of the morning, all dis- 
persed, went their appointed ways. 
And thus ever, by day and night, under 
the sun and under the stars, climbing 
the dusty hills and toiling along the 
w'eary plains, journeying by land and 
journeying by sea, coming and going so 
strangely, to meet and to act and react 
on one another, move all we restless 
travellers through the pilgrimage of life. 


CHAPTER III. 

HOME. 

It was a Sunday evening in London, 
gloomy, close, and stale. Maddening 
church-bells of all degrees of dissonance, 
sharp and flat, cracked and clear, fast 
and slow, made the brick and mortar 
echoes hideous. Melancholy streets in 
a penitential garb of soot, steeped the 
souls of the people who were condemned 
to look at them out of windows in dire 
despondency. In every thoroughfare, 
up almost every alley, and down almost 
every turning, some doleful bell was 
throbbing, jerking, tolling, as if the 
Plague were in the city and the dead- 
carts were going round. Everything 
was bolted and barred that could by 
possibility furnish relief to an over- 
worked people. No pictures, no un- 
familiar animals, no rare plants or 
flowers, no natural or artificial wonders 
of the ancient world, — all taboo with 
that enlightened strictness, that the ugly 
South Sea gods in the British Museum 
might have supposed themselves at home 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


17 


again. Nothing to see but streets, 
streets, streets. Nothing to breathe 
but streets, streets, streets.. Nothing 
to change the brooding mind, or raise it 
up. Nothing for the spent toiler to do, 
but to compare the monotony of his 
seventh day with the monotony of his 
six days, think what a weary life he led, 
and make the best of it, — or the worst, 
according to the probabilities. 

At such a happy time, so propitious 
to the interests of religion and morality, 
Mr. Arthur Clennam, newly arrived 
from Marseilles by way of Dover, and 
by Dover coach the Blue-eyed Maid, 
sat in the window of a coffee-house on 
Ludgate Hill. Ten thousand respon- 
sible houses surrounded him, frowning 
as heavily on the streets they composed 
as if they were every one inhabited by 
the ten young men of the Calender’s 
story, who blackened their faces and 
bemoaned their miseries every night. 
Fifty thousand lairs surrounded him 
where people lived so unwholesome- 
ly, that fair water put into their crowded 
rooms on Saturday night would be cor- 
rupt on Sunday morning ; albeit, my 
lord, their county member was amazed 
that they failed to sleep in company 
with their butcher’s meat. Miles of 
close wells and pits of houses, where 
the inhabitants gasped for air,, stretched 
far away towards every point of the 
compass. Through the heart of the 
town a deadly sewer ebbed and flowed, 
in the place of a fine fresh river. What 
secular want could the million or §q of 
human beings whose daily labor, six 
days in the week, lay among these 
Arcadian objects, from the sweet same- 
ness of which they had no escape be- 
tween the cradle and the grave, — what 
secular want could they possibly have 
upon their seventh day ? Clearly they 
could want nothing but a stringent 
policeman. 

Mr. Arthur Clennam sat in the win- 
dow of the coffee-house on Ludgate 
Hill, counting one of the neighboring 
bells, making sentences and burdens of 
songs out of it in spite of himself, and 
wondering how many sick people it 
might be the death of in the course 
of a year. As the hour approached, its 
changes of measure made it more and 


more exasperating. At the quarter it 
went off into a condition of deadly 
lively importunity, urging the populace 
in a voluble manner to Come to church, 
Come to church, Come to church ! At 
the ten minutes, it became aware that 
the congregation would be, scanty, and 
slowly hammered out in low spirits, 
They won't come, They won't come, 
They won’t come ! At the five minutes, 
it abandoned hope, and shook every 
house in the neighborhood for three 
hundred seconds, with one dismal 
swing per second, as a groan of despair. 

“Thank Heaven!” said Clennam, 
when the hour struck, and the bell 
stopped. 

But its sound had revived a long train 
of miserable Sundays, and the proces- 
sion would not stop with the bell, but 
continued to march on. “ Heaven for- 
give me,” said he, “ and those who 
trained me. How I have hated this 
day ! ” 

There was the dreary Sunday of his 
childhood, when be sat with his hands 
before him, scared out of his senses by 
a horrible tract which commenced busi- 
ness with the poor child by asking him in 
its title, why he was going to Perdition ? 
— a piece of curiosity that he really in 
a frock and drawers was not in a condi- 
tion to satisfy, — and which, for the fur- 
ther attraction of his infant mind, had 
a parenthesis in every other line with 
some such hiccupping reference as 2 Ep. 
Thess. c. iii. v. 6 & 7. There was the 
sleepy Sunday of his boyhood, when, 
like a military deserter, he was marched 
to chapel by a picquet of teachers three 
times a day, morally handcuffed to an- 
other boy ; and when he would willing- 
ly have bartered two meals of indigest- 
ible sermon for another ounce or two of 
inferior mutton at his scanty dinner in 
the flesh. There was the interminable 
Sunday of his nonage ; when his mother, 
stern of face and unrelenting of heart, 
would sit all day behind a Bible, — 
bound like her own construction of it 
in the hardest, barest, and straightesc 
boards, with one dinted ornament on 
the cover like the drag of a chain, and 
a wrathful sprinkling of red upon the 
edges of the leaves, — as if it, ' of all 
books ! were a fortification against 


2 


i8 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


sweetness of temper, natural affection, 
and gentle intercourse. There was the 
resentful Sunday of a little later, when 
he sat glowering and glooming through 
the tardy length of the day, with a sul- 
len sense of injury in his heart, and no 
more real knowledge of the beneficent 
history of the New Testament, than if 
he had been bred among idolaters. 
There was a legion of Sundays, all days 
of unserviceable bitterness and mortifi- 
cation, slowly passing before him. 

“ Beg pardon, sir,” said a brisk 
waiter, rubbing the table. “ Wish see 
bedroom ? ” 

“ Yes. I have just made up my 
mind to do it.” 

“ Chaymaid ! ” cried the waiter. 
“ Gelen boxnum seven wish see room !” 

“ Stay ! ” said Clennam, rousing him- 
self. “ I was not thinking of what I 
said ; I answered mechanically. I am 
not going to sleep here. I am going 
home.” 

“ Deed, sir ? Chaymaid ! Gelen box 
num seven, not go sleep here, gome.” 

He sat in the same place as the day 
died, looking at the dull houses oppo- 
site, and thinking if the disembodied 
spirits of former inhabitants were ever 
conscious of them, how they must pity 
themselves for their old places of im- 
prisonment. Sometimes a face would 
appear behind the dingy glass of a win- 
dow, and would fade away into the 
gloom as if it had seen enough of life 
and had vanished out of it. Presently 
the rain began to fall in slanting lines 
between him and those houses, and 
people began to collect under cover of 
the public passage opposite, and to look 
out hopelessly at the sky as the rain 
dropped thicker and faster. Then wet 
umbrellas began to appear, draggled 
skirts, and mud. What the mud had 
been doing with itself, or where it came 
from, who could say? But it seemed to 
collect in a moment, as a crowd will, 
and in five minutes to have splashed all 
the sons and daughters of Adam. The 
lamplighter was going his rounds now ; 
and as the fiery jets sprang up under 
his touch, one might have fancied them 
astonished at being suffered to intro- 
duce any show of brightness into such 
a dismal scene. 


Mr. Arthur Clennam took up his hat, 
and buttoned his coat, and walked out. 
In the country, the rain would have de- 
veloped a thousand fresh scents, and 
every drop would have had its bright 
association with some beautiful form of 
growth or life. In the city, it developed 
only foul stale smells, and was a sickly, 
lukewarm, dirt-stained, wretched addi- 
tion to the gutters. 

He crossed by Saint Paul’s and went 
down, at a long angle, almost to the wa- 
ter’s edge, through some of the crooked 
and descending streets which lie (and 
lay more crookedly and closely then) 
between the river and Cheapside. Pass- 
ing, now the mouldy hall of some obso- 
lete Worshipful Company, now the illu- 
minated windows of a Congregationless 
Church that seemed to be waiting for 
some adventurous Belzoni to dig it out 
and discover its history ; passing silent 
warehouses and wharves, and here and 
there a narrow alley leading to the river, 
^where a wretched little bill, Found 
Drowned, was weeping on the wet wall ; 
he came at last to the house he sought. 
An old brick house, so dingy as to be 
all but black, standing by itself within a 
gateway. Before it, a square court-yard 
where a shrub or two and a patch of 
grass were as rank (which is saying 
much) as the iron railings enclosing 
them were rusty ; behind it, a jumble of 
roots. It was a double house, with long, 
narro^v, heavily framed windows. Many 
■years ago, it had had it in its mind to 
slide down sideways; it had been propped 
up, however, and was leaning on some 
half-dozen gigantic crutche^; which 
gymnasium for the neighboring cats, 
weather-stained, smoke-blackened, and 
overgrown with weeds, appeared in 
these latter days to be no very sure re- 
liance. 

“ Nothing changed,” said the travel- 
ler, stopping to look round. “Dark 
and miserable as ever. A light in my 
mother’s window, which seems never 
to have been extinguished since I came 
home twice a year from school, and 
dragged my box over this pavement. 
Well, well, well ! ” 

He went up to the door, which had a 
projecting canopy in carved work, of fes- 
tooned jack-towels and children’s heads 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


19 


with water on the brain, designed after 
a once popular monumental pattern ; 
and knocked. A shuffling step was soon 
heard on the stone floor of the hall, and 
the door was opened by an old man, 
bent and dried, but with keen eyes. 

He had a candle in his hand, and he 
held it up for a moment to assist his 
keen eyes. “Ah, Mr. Arthur?” he 
said, without any emotion, “you are 
come at last? Step in.” 

Mr. Arthur stepped in and shut the 
door. 

“Your figure is filled out, and set,” 
said the old man, turning to look at him 
with the light raised again, and shaking 
his head; “but you don’t come up to 
your father in my opinion. Nor yet 
your mother.” 

“ How is my mother? ” 

“ She is as she always is now. Keeps 
her room when not actually bedridden, 
and hasn’t been out of it fifteen times 
in as many years, Arthur.” They had 
walked into a spare, meagre dining- 
room. The old- man had put the can- 
dlestick upon the table, and, supporting 
his right elbow with his left hand, was 
smoothing his leathern jaws while he 
looked at the visitor. The visitor of- 
fered his hand. The old man took it 
coldly enough, and seemed to prefer his 
jaws ; to which he returned, as soon as 
he could. 

“ I doubt if your mother will approve 
of your coming home on the Sabbath, 
Arthur,” he said, shaking his head 
warily. 

“You wouldn’t have me go away 
again ? ” 

“ Oh ! I ? I ? Iam not the master. 
It ’s r not what / would have. I have 
stood between your father and mother 
for a number of years. I don’t pretend 
to stand between your mother and you.” 

“ Will you tell her that I have come 
home? ” 

“Yes, Arthur, yes. O, to be sure! 
I ’ll tell her that you have come home. 
Please to wait here. You won’t find 
the room changed.” He took another 
candle from a cupboard, lighted it, left 
the first on the table, and went upon 
his errand. He was a short, bald old 
man, in a high-shouldered black coat 
and waistcoui, drab breeches, and long 


drab gaiters. He might, from his dress, 
have been either clerk or servant, and 
in fact had long been both. There was 
nothing about him in the way of deco- 
ration but a watch, which was lowered 
into the depths of its proper pocket by 
an old black ribbon, and had a tarnished 
copper key moored above it, to show 
where it was sunk. His head was awry, 
and he had a one-sided, crab-like way 
with him, as if his foundations had 
yielded at about the same time as those 
of the house, and he ought to have been 
propped up in a similar manner. 

“ How weak am I,” said Arthur 
Clennam, when he was gone, “ that I 
could shed tears at this reception ! I, 
who have never experienced anything 
else ; who have never expected any- 
thing else.” 

He not only could, but did. It was 
the momentary yielding of a nature that 
had been disappointed from the dawn 
of its perceptions, but had not quite 
given up all its hopeful yearnings yet. 
He subdued it, took up the candle and 
examined the room. The old articles 
of furniture were in their old places ; 
the Plagues of Egypt, much the dim- 
mer for the fly and smoke plagues of 
London, were framed and glazed upon 
the walls. There was the old cellaret 
with nothing in it, lined with lead, like 
a sort of coffin in compartments ; there 
was the old dark closet, also with noth- 
ing in it, of which he had been many a 
time the sole contents, in days of pun- 
ishment, when he had regarded it as 
the veritable entrance to that bourn to 
which the tract had found him gallop- 
ing. There was the large, hard-featured 
clock on the sideboard, which he used 
to see bending its figured brows upon 
him with a savage joy when he was be- 
hindhand with his lessons, and which, 
when it was wound up once a week 
with an iron handle, used to sound as if 
it were growling in ferocious anticipa- 
tion of the miseries into which it would 
bring him. But here was the old man 
come back, saying, “Arthur, I ’ll go 
before and light you.” 

Arthur followed him up the staircase, 
which was panelled off into spaces like 
so many mourning tablets, into a dim 
bedchamber, the floor of which had 


20 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


gradually so sunk and settled, that the 
fireplace was in a dell. On a black 
bier-like sofa in this hollow, propped 
up behind with one great angular black 
bolster, like the block at a state execu- 
tion in the good old times, sat his 
mother in a widow’s dress. 

She and his father had been at va- 
riance from his earliest remembrance. 
To sit speechless himself in the midst of 
rigid silence, glancing in dread from the 
one averted face to the other, had been 
the peacefullest occupation of his child- 
hood. She gave him one glassy kiss, 
and four stiff fingers muffled in worsted. 
This embrace concluded, he sat down 
on the opposite side of her little table. 
There w r as a fire in the grate, as there 
had been night and day for fifteen years. 
There was a kettle on the hob as there 
had been night and day for fifteen years. 
There was a little mound of damped 
ashes on the top of the fire, and another 
little mound swept together under the 
grate, as there had been night and day 
for fifteen years. There was a smell of 
black dye in the airless room, which 
the fire had been drawing out of the 
crape and stuff of the widow’s dress for 
fifteen months, and out of the bier-like 
sofa for fifteen years. 

“ Mother, this is a change from your 
old active habits.” 

“ The world has narrowed to these 
dimensions, Arthur,” she replied, glan- 
cing round the room. “It is well for 
me that I never set my heart upon its 
hollow vanities.” 

The old influence of her presence and 
her stern strong voice so gathered 
about her son, that he felt conscious of 
a renewal of the timid chill and reserve 
of his childhood. 

“ Dor you never leave your room, 
mother?” 

“ What with my rheumatic affection, 
and what with its attendant debility or 
nervous weakness, — names are of no 
matter now, — I have lost the use of my 
limbs. I never leave my room. I 
have not been outside this door for — 
tell him for how long,” she said, speak- 
ing over her shoulder. - 

“ A dozen year next Christmas,” re- 
turned a cracked voice out of the dim- 
ness behind. 


“Is that Affery ? ” said Arthur, look- 
ing towards it. 

The cracked voice replied that it was 
Affery ; and an old woman came forward 
into what doubtful light there was, and 
kissed her hand once ; then subsided 
again into the dimness. 

“I am able,” said Mrs. Clennam, 
with a slight motion of her worsted- 
muffled right-hand towards a chair on 
wheels, standing before a tall writing- 
cabinet close shut up, — “I am able to 
attend to my business duties, and I am 
thankful for the privilege. It is a great 
privilege. But no more of business on 
this day. It is a bad night, is it not? ” 

“ Yes, mother.” 

“ Does it snow? ” 

“ Snow, mother? And we only yet 
in September? ” 

“ All seasons are alike to me,” she 
returned, with a grim kind of luxurious- 
ness. “ I know nothing of summer 
and winter, shut up here. The Lord 
has been pleased to put me beyond all 
that.” With her cold gray eyes and 
her cold gray hair, and her immovable 
face, as stiff as the folds of her stony 
head-dress, — her being beyond the 
reach of the seasons seemed but a fit 
sequence to her being beyond the reach 
of all changing emotions. 

On her little table lay two or three 
books, her handkerchief, a pair of steel 
spectacles newly taken off, and an old- 
fashioned gold watch in a heavy double 
case. Upon this last object her son’s 
eyes and her own now rested together. 

“ I see that you received the packet 
I sent you on my father’s death, safely, 
mother.” 

“You see.” 

“ I never knew my father to show so 
much anxiety on any subject as that 
his watch should be sent straight to 
you.” 

“ I keep it here as a remembrance of 
your father.” 

“ It w r as not until the last that he ex- 
pressed the wish. When he could only 
put his hand upon it, and very indistinct- 
lysay tome, ‘Your mother.’ A moment 
before, I thought him wandering in his 
mind, as he had been for many hours, — 
I think he had no consciousness of pain 
in his short illness, — when I saw him 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


21 


turn himself in his bed and try to open 
it.” 

“ Was your father, then, not wander- 
ing in his mindwhen he tried to open it ? ” 

“ No. He was quite sensible at that 
time.” 

Mrs. Clennam shook her head ; 
whether in dismissal of the deceased 
or opposing herself to her son’s opinion, 
was not clearly expressed. 

“ After my father’s death I opened it 
myself, thinking there might be, for any- 
thing I knew, some memorandum there. 
However, as I need not tell you, moth- 
er, there was nothing but the old silk 
watch-paper worked in beads, which 
you found (no doubt) in i£6 .place be- 
tween the cases, where I found and 
left it.” 

Mrs. Clennam signified assent ; then 
added, “ No more of business on this 
day”; and then added, “Affery, it is 
nine o’clock.” v 4 * 

Upon this, the old woman cleared the 
little table, went out jo f the room, and 
quickly returned with a tray, on which 
was a. dish of little rusks and a small 
precise pat of butter, cool, symmetrical, 
white, and plump. The old man who 
had been standing by the door in one 
attitude during the whole interview, 
looking at the mother up stairs as Ire had 
looked at the son down stairs, went out 
at the same time, and, after a longer 
absence, returned with another tray on 
which was the greater part of a bottle of 
port wine (which, to judge by his pant- 
ing, he had brought from the cellar), a 
lemon, a .sugar basin, and a spice-box. 
With these materials and the aid of the 
kettle, he filled a tumbler with a hot 
and odorous mixture, measured out and 
compounded with as much nicety as 
a physician’s prescription. Into this 
mixture Mrs. Clennam dipped certain 
of the rusks and ate them ; while the 
old woman buttered certain other of the 
rusks, which were to be eaten alone. 
When the invalid had eaten all the rusks 
and drunk all the mixture, the two trays 
were removed ; and the books and the 
candle, watch, handkerchief, and spec- 
tacles, were replaced upon the table. 
She then put on the spectacles and 
read certain passages aloud from a 
book, — sternly, fiercely, wrathfully, — 


praying that her enemies (she made 
them by her tone and manner ex- 
pressly hers) might be put to the 
edge of the sword, consumed by fire, 
smitten by plagues and leprosy, that 
their bones might be ground to dust, 
and that they might be utterly exter- 
minated. As she read on, years seemed 
to fall away from her son like the im- 
aginings of a dream, and all the old 
dark horrors of his usual preparation 
for the sleep of an innocent child to 
overshadow him. 

She shut the book and remained for 
a little time with her face shaded by 
her hand. So did the old man, other- 
wise still unchanged in attitude ; so, 
probably, did the old woman in her 
dimmer part of the room. Then the 
sick woman was ready for bed. 

“ Good night, Arthur. Affery will 
see to your accommodation. Only 
touch me, for my hand is tender.” 
He touched the worsted muffling of her 
hand, — that was nothing ; if his moth- 
er had been sheathed in brass there 
would have been no new barrier be- 
tween them, — and followed the old man 
and woman down stairs. 

The latter asked him, when they 
were alone together among the heavy 
shadows of the dining-room, would he 
have some supper? 

“ No, Affery, no supper.” 

“ You shall if you like,” said Affery. 
“ There ’s her to-morrow’s partridge in 
the larder, — her first this year ; say 
the word and I ’ll cook it.” 

No, he had not long dined, and could 
eat nothing. 

“Have something to drink, then,” 
said Affery. “You shall have some of 
her bottle of port, if you like. I ’ll tell 
Jeremiah that you ordered me to bring 
it you.” 

No, nor would he have that, either. 

“It’s no reason, Arthur,” said the 
old woman, bending over him to whis- 
per, “ that because I am afeard of my 
life of ’em, you should be. You’ve 
got half the property, have n’t you ? ’* 

“ Yes, yes.” 

“Well, then, don’t you be cowed. 
You’re clever, Arthur, ain’t you?” 

He nodded, as she seemed to expect 
an answer in the affirmative. 


22 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


“ Then stand up against them ! She ’s 
awful clever, and none but a clever one 
durst say a word to her. He ’s a clever 
one — O, he ’s a clever one ! — and he 
ives it her when he has a mind to ’t, 
e does ! ” 

“ Your husband does ? ” 

“Does? It makes me shake from 
head to foot to hear him give it her. 
My husband, Jeremiah Flintwinch, can 
conquer even your mother. What can 
he be but a clever one to do that ! ” 

His shuffling footstep coming towards 
them caused her to retreat to the other 
end of the room. Though a tall, hard- 
favored, sinewy old woman, who in her 
youth might have enlisted in the Foot 
Guards without much fear of discovery, 
she collapsed before the little keen- 
eyed, crab-like old man. 

“Now, Affery,” said he, — “now, 
woman, what are you doing? Can’t 
you find Master Arthur something or 
another to pick at ? ” 

Master Arthur repeated his recent 
refusal to pick at anything. 

“ Very well, then,” said the old man, 
“ m^ke his bed. Stir yourself.” His 
neck was so twisted that the knotted 
ends of his white cravat usually dangled 
under one ear ; his natural acerbity and 
energy, always contending with a sec- 
ond nature of habitual repression, gave 
his features a swollen and suffused look; 
and altogether he had a weird appear- 
ance of having hanged himself at one 
time or other, and of having gone about 
ever since, halter and all, exactly as 
some timely hand had cut him down.” 

“ You ’ll have bitter words together 
to-morrow, Arthur, — you and ) r our 
mother,” said Jeremiah, “Your hav- 
ing given up the business on your fa- 
ther’s death — which she suspects, 
though we have left it to you to tell her 
— won’t go off smoothly.” 

“ I have given up everything in life 
for the business, and the time came for 
me to give up that.” 

“ Good ! ” cried Jeremiah, evidently 
meaning bad. “ Very good ! Only 
don’t- expect me to stand between your 
mother and you, Arthur. I stood be- 
tween your mother and your father, 
fending off this and fending off that, 
and getting crushed and pounded be- 


twixt ’em ; and I ’ve done with such 
work.” 

“ You will never be asked to begin it 
again for me, Jeremiah.” 

“ Good ! I’m glad to hear it ; be- 
cause I should have had to decline it, if 
I had been. That ’s enough, — as your 
mother says, — and more than enough 
of such matters on a Sabbath night. 
Affery, woman, have you found what 
you want yet? ” 

She had been collecting sheets and 
blankets from a press, and hastened to 
gather them up, and to reply, “Yes, 
Jeremiah.” Arthur Clennam helped 
her by carrying the load himself, wished 
the old man good night, and went up 
stairs with her to the top of the house. 

They mounted up and up, through 
the musty smell of an old, close house, 
little used, to a large garret bedroom. 
Meagre and spare, like all the other 
rooms, it was even uglier and grimmer 
than the rest, by being the place of 
banishment for the worn-out furniture. 
Its movables were ugly old chairs with 
worn-out seats and ugly old chairs 
without any seats, a threadbare, pat- 
ternless carpet, a maimed table, a crip- 
fled wardrobe, a lean set of fire-irons, 
ike the skeleton of a set deceased, a 
washing-stand that looked as if it had 
stood for ages in a hail of dirty soap- 
suds, and a bedstead with four bare 
atomies of posts, each terminating in a 
spike, as if for the dismal accommoda- 
tion of lodgers who might prefer to im- 
pale themselves. Arthur opened the 
long, low window, and looked out upon 
the old blasted and blackened forest of 
chimneys and the old red glare in the 
sky, which had seemed to him once 
upon a time but a nightly reflection of 
the fiery environment that w'as present- 
ed to his childish fancy in all directions, 
let it look where it would. 

He drew in his head again, sat down 
at the bedside, and looked on at Affery 
Flintwinch making the bed. 

“Affery, you were not married when 
I went away.” 

She screwed her mouth into the form 
of saying “No,” shook her head, and 
proceeded to get a pillow into its case. 

“ How did it happen ? ” 

“ Why, Jeremiah, o’ course,” said 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


23 


Affery, with an end of the pillow-case 
between her teeth. 

“ Of course he proposed it, but how 
did it all come about ? I should have 
thought that neither of you would have 
married ; least of all should I have 
thought of your marrying each other.” 

“No more should I,” said Mrs. 
Flintwinch, tying the pillow tightly in 
its case. 

“That’s what I mean. When did 
you begin to think otherwise ? ” 

“ Never begun to think otherwise at 
all,” said Mrs. Flintwinch. 

Seeing, as she patted the pillow into 
its place on the bolster, that he was 
still looking at her, as if waiting for the 
rest of her reply, she gave it a great 
poke in the middle, and asked, “How 
could I help myself? ” 

“ How could you help yourself from 
being married ? ” 

“O’ course,” said Mrs. Flintwinch. 
“It was no doing o’ mine, /’d never 
thought of it. I ’d got something to do, 
without thinking, indeed ! he kept me 
to it when she could go about, and she 
could go about then.” 

“Well?” 

“Well?” echoed Mrs. Flintwinch. 
“That’s what I said myself. Well! 
What’s the use of considering? If 
them two clever ones has made up 
their minds to it, what ’s left for me 
to do? Nothing.” 

“ Was it my mother’s project, then? ” 

“The Lord bless you, Arthur, and 
forgive me the wish ! ” cried Affery, 
speaking always in a low tone. “If 
they had n’t been both of a mind in 
it, how could it ever have been ? Jere- 
miah never courted me ; ’t ain’t likely 
that he would, after living in the house 
with me and ordering me about for as 
many years as he ’d done. He said to 
me one day, he said, ‘ Affery,’ he said, 
‘now I am going to tell you something. 
What do you think of the name of 
Flintwinch? ’ ‘What do I think of 
it?’ I says. ‘Yes,’ he said; ‘because 
you ’re going to take it,’ he said. 
‘Take it?’ I says. ‘ Jere-wi-ah ? ’ O, 
he ’s a clever one ! ” 

Mrs. Flintwinch went on to spread 
the upper sheet over the bed, and 
the blanket over that, and the counter- 


pane over that, as if she had quite con- 
cluded her story. 

“ Well ? ” said Arthur again. 

“Well?” echoed Mrs. Flintwinch 
again. “ How could I help myself? 
He said to me, ‘ Affery, you and me 
must be married, and I ’ll tell you 
why. She ’s failing in health, and 
she ’ll want pretty constant attendance 
up in her room, and we shall have to 
be much with her, and there ’ll be no- 
body about now but ourselves when 
we ’re away from her, and altogether it 
will be more convenient. She ’s of my 
opinion,’ he said ; ‘ so if you ’ll put your 
bonnet on, next Monday morning at 
eight, we ’ll get it over.’” Mrs. Flint- 
winch tucked up the bed. 

“Well?” 

“Well?” repeated Mrs. Flintwinch, 
“ I think so ! I sits me down and 
says it. Well! — Jeremiah then says 
to me, ‘ As to banns, next Sunday being 
the third time of asking (for I ’ve put ’em 
up a fortnight), is my reason for naming 
Monday. She’ll speak to you about 
it herself, and now she ’ll find you pre- 
pared, Affery.’ That same day she 
spoke to me, and she said, ‘ So, Affery, 
I understand that you and Jeremiah 
are going to be married. I am glad 
of it, and so are you, with reason. It 
is a very good thing for you, and very 
welcome under the circumstances to 
me. He is a sensible man, and a trust- 
worthy man, and a persevering man, 
and a pious man.’ What could I say 
when it had come to that? Why, if 
it had been — a Smothering instead of 
a Wedding,” Mrs. Flintwinch cast 
about in her mind with great pains 
for this form of expression, “ I could n’t 
have said a word upon it, against them 
two clever ones.” 

“ In good faith, I believe so.” 

“ And so you may, Arthur.” 

“ Affery, what girl was that in my 
mother’s room just now?” 

“Girl?” said Mrs. Flintwinch in a 
rather sharp key. 

“It was a girl, surely, whom I saw 
near you, — almost hidden in the dark 
corner? ” 

“Oh! She? Little Dorrit? She ’s 
nothing; she’s a whim of — hers.” It 
was a peculiarity of Affery Flintwinch 


24 


LITTLE DORR IT. 


that she never spoke of Mrs. Clennam 
by name. “ But there ’s another sort 
of girls than that about. Have you 
forgot your old sweetheart? Long and 
long ago, I ’ll be bound.” 

“ I suffered enough from my mother’s 
separating us, to remember her. I rec- 
ollect her very well.” 

“ Have you got another? ” 

“No.” 

“ Here ’shews for you, then. She’s 
well to do now, and a widow. And if 
you like to have her, why you can.” 

“ And how do you know that, Af- 
fery?” 

“ Them two clever ones have been 
speaking about it. — There’s Jeremiah 
on the stairs ! ” She was gone in a 
moment. 

Mrs. Flintwinch had introduced into 
the vyeb that his mind was busily weav- 
ing, in that old workshop where the 
loom of his youth had stood, the last 
thread wanting to the pattern. The 
airy folly of a boy’s love had found its 
way even into that house, and he had 
been as wretched under its hopelessness 
as if the house had been a castle of ro- 
mance. Little more than a week ago, 
at Marseilles, the face of the pretty 
girl from whom he had parted with 
regret, had had an unusual interest for 
him, and a tender hold upon him, be- 
cause of some resemblance, real or im- 
agined, to this first face that had soared 
out of his gloomy life into the bright 
glories of fancy. He leaned upon the 
sill of the long low' window, and look- 
ing out upon the blackened forest of 
chimneys again, began to dream. For 
it had been the uniform tendency of 
thjs man’s life — so much w'as wanting 
in it to think about, so much that might 
have been better directed and happier 
to speculate upon — to make him a 
dreamer, after all. 


CHAPTER IV. 

MRS. . FLINTWINCH HAS A DREAM. 

When Mrs. Flintw'inch dreamed, 
she penally dreamed, unlike the son of 
her bid .mistress, with her eyes shut. 


She had a curiously vivid dream that 
night, and before she had left the son 
of her old mistress many hours. In 
fact it was not at all like a dream, it 
was so very real in every respect. It 
happened in this wise. 

The bedchamber occupied by Mr. 
and Mrs. Flintwinch was within a few 
paces of that to W'hich Mrs. Clennam 
had been so long confined. It was not 
on the same floor, for it w'as a room at 
the side of the house, which was ap- 
proached by a steep descent of a few 
odd steps, diverging from the main 
staircase nearly opposite to Mrs. Clen- 
nam’s door. It could scarcely be said 
to be within call, the w’alls, doors, and 
panelling of the old place were so cum- 
brous ; but it was w'ithin easy reach, 
in any undress, at any hour of the night, 
in any temperature. At the head of 
the bed, and within a foot of Mrs. 
Flintwincb’s ear, was a bell, the line of 
which hung ready to Mrs. Clennam’s 
hand. Whenever this bell rang, up 
started Afferv, and was in the sick-room 
before she was awake. 

Having got her mistress into bed, 
lighted her lamp, and given her good 
night, Mrs. Flintwinch w'ent to roost 
as usual, saving that her lord had not 
yet appeared. It was her lord himself 
who became — unlike the last theme in 
the mind, according to the observation 
of most philosophers — tfie subject of 
Mrs. Flintw'inch’s dream. 

It seemed to her that she awoke, af- 
ter sleeping some hours, and found 
Jeremiah not yet abed. That she 
looked at the candle she had left burn- 
ing, and, measuring the time like King 
Alfred the Great, was confirmed by its 
wasted state in her belief that she had 
been asleep for some considerable peri- 
od. That she arose thereupon, muffled 
herself up in a wi-apper, put on her 
shoes, and went out on the staircase 
much surprised, to look for Jeremiah. 

The staircase w'as as wooden and 
solid as need be, and Affery w'ent 
straight dowm it without any of those 
deviations peculiar to dreams. She did 
not skim over it, but walked down it, and 
guided herself by the banisters on ac- 
count of her candle having died out. In 
one corner of the hall, behind the house 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


25 


door, there was a little waiting-room, 
like a well-shaft, with a long narrow 
window in it as if it had been ripped 
up. In this room, which was never 
used, a light was burning. 

Mrs. Flintwinch crossed the hall, 
feeling its pavement cold to her stock- 
ingless feet, and peeped in between the 
rusty hinges of the door, which stood a 
little open. She expected to see Jere- 
miah fast asleep or in a fit, but he was 
calmly seated in a chair, awake, and in 
his usual health. But what — hey? — 
Lord forgive us ! — Mrs. Flintwinch 
muttered some ejaculation to this effect, 
and turned giddy. 

For, Mr. Flintwinch awake, was 
watching Mr. Flintwinch asleep. He 
sat on one side of a small table, look- 
ing keenly at himself on the other side 
with his chin sunk on his breast, snoring. 
The waking Flintwinch had his full 
front face presented to his wife ; the 
sleeping Flintwinch was in profile. 
The waking Flintwinch was the old 
original ; the sleeping Flintwinch was 
the double. Just as she might have 
distinguished between a tangible object 
and its reflection in a glass, Affery made 
out this difference with her head going 
round and round. 

If she had had any doubt which was 
her own Jeremiah, it would have been 
resolved by his impatience. He looked 
about him fop an offensive weapon, 
caught up the snuffers, and, before ap- 
plying them to the cabbage-headed can- 
dle, lunged at the sleeper as though he 
would have run him through the body. 

“Who’s that? What’s the mat- 
ter?” cried the sleeper, starting. 

Mr. Flintwinch made a movement 
with the snuffers, as if he would have 
enforced silence on his companion by 
putting them down his throat ; the 
companion coming to himself, said, 
rubbing his eyes, “ I forgot where I 
was.” 

“ You have- been asleep,” snarled 
Jeremiah, referring to his watch, “two 
hours. You said you would be rested 
enough if you had a short nap.” 

I have had a short nap,” said 
Double. 

“ Half past two o’clock in the morn- 
ing,” muttered Jeremiah. “Where’s 


your hat ? Where ’s your coat ? 
Where’s the box?” 

“All here,” said Double, tying up 
his throat with sleepy carefulness in a 
shawl. “ Stop a minute. Now give 
me the sleeve, — not that sleeve, the 
other one. Ha ! I ’m not as young 
as I was.” Mr. Flintwinch had pulled 
him into his coat with vehement ener- 
gy. “ You promised me a second glass 
after I was rested.” 

“ Drink it ! ” returned Jeremiah, 
“and — choke yourself, I was going to 
say — but go, I mean.” At the same 
time he produced the identical port- 
wine bottle, and filled a wineglass. 

“ Her port-wine, I believe ? ” said 
Double, tasting it as if he were in the 
Docks, with hours to suare. “ Her 
health.” 

He took a sip. 

“ Your health ! ” 

He took another sip. 

“ His health ! ” 

He took another sip. 

“ And all friends round Saint Paul’s.” 
He emptied and put down the wine- 
glass half-way through this ancient civic 
toast, and took up the box. It was an 
iron box some two feet square, which 
he carried under his arms pretty easily. 
Jeremiah watched his manner of adjust- 
ing it, with jealous eyes ; tried it with 
his hands, to be sure that he had a firm 
hold of it ; bade him for his life be care- 
ful what he was about ; and then stole 
out on tiptoe to open the door for him. 
Affery, anticipating the last movement, 
was on the staircase. Tire sequence of 
things was so ordinary and natural, 
that, standing there, she could hear the 
door open, feel the night air, and see 
the stars outside. 

But now came the most remarkable 
part of the dream. She felt so afraid 
of her husband, that being on the stair- 
case, she had not the power to retreat 
to her room (which she might easily 
have done before he had fastened the 
door), but stood there staring. Conse- 
quently when he came up the staircase 
to bed, candle in hand, he came full up- 
on her. He looked astonished,- but 
said not a word. He kept his eyes up- 
on her, and kept advancing ; and she, 
completely under his influence, kept re- 


26 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


tiring before him. Thus, she walking 
backward and he walking forward, they 
came into their own room. They were 
no sooner shut in there, than Mr. Flint- 
winch took her by the throat, and 
shook her until she was black in the 
face. 

“ Why, Affery, woman — Affery ! ” 
said Mr. Flintwinch. “ What have 
you been dreaming of? Wake up, 
wake up ! What ’s the matter ? ” 

“ The — the matter, Jeremiah ? ” 
gasped Mrs. Flintwinch, rolling her 
eyes. 

“ Why, Affery, woman — Affery ! 
You have been getting out of bed in 
your sleep, my dear ! I come up, after 
having fallen asleep myself, below, and 
find you in your wrapper here, with the 
nightmare. Affery, woman,” said Mr. 
Flintwinch, with a friendly grin on his 
expressive countenance, “ if you ever 
have a dream of this sort again, it ’ll be 
a sign of your being in want of physic. 
And I ’ll give you such a dose, old 
woman — such a dose ! ” 

Mrs. Flintwinch thanked him and 
crept into bed. 


CHAPTER V. 

FAMILY AFFAIRS. 

As the city clocks struck nine on 
Monday morning, Mrs. Clennam was 
wheeled by Jeremiah Flintwinch of the 
cut-down aspect, to her tall cabinet. 
When she had unlocked and opened it, 
and had settled herself at its desk, 
Jeremiah withdrew, — as it might be, 
to hang himself more effectually, — and 
her son appeared. 

“ Are you any better this morning, 
mother ? ” 

She shook her head, with the same 
austere air of luxuriousness that she had 
shown overnight when speaking of the 
weather. “ I shall never be better any 
more. It is well for me, Arthur, that 
I know it and can bear it.” 

Sitting with her hands laid separately 
upon the desk, and the tall cabinet 
towering before her, she looked as if 
she were performing on a dumb church 


organ. Her son thought so (it was an 
old thought with him), while he took 
his seat beside it. 

She opened a drawer or two, looked 
over some business papers, and put 
them back again. Her severe face had 
no thread of relaxation in it, by which 
any explorer could have been guided to 
the gloomy-labyrintli of her thoughts. 

“Shall I speak of our affairs, mother? 
Are you inclined to enter upon busi- 
ness ? ” 

“Am I inclined, Arthur? Rather, 
are you ? Your father has been dead a 
year and more. I have been at your 
disposal, and waiting your pleasure, 
ever since.” 

“ There was much to arrange before 
I could leave ; and when I did leave, I 
travelled a little for rest and relief.” 

She turned her face towards him, as 
not having heard or understood his last 
words. 

“ For rest and relief.” 

She glanced round the sombre room, 
and appeared from the motion of her 
lips to repeat the words to herself, as 
calling it to witness how little of either 
it afforded her. 

“ Besides, mother, you being sole 
executrix, and having the direction and 
management of the estate, there re- 
mained little business, or I might say 
none, that I could transact, until you 
had had time to arrange matters to 
your satisfaction.” 

“The accounts are made out,” she 
returned, “ I have them here. The 
vouchers have all been examined and 
passed. You can inspect them when 
you like, Arthur; now, if you please.” 

“ It is quite enough, mother, to know 
that the business is completed. Shall 
I proceed then ? ” ^ 

“ Why not ! ” she said, in her frozen 
way. 

“ Mother, our House has done less 
and less for some years past, and our 
dealings have been progressively on the 
decline. We have never shown much 
confidence, or invited much ; we have 
attached no people to us ; the track we 
have kept is not the track of the time ; 
and we have been left far behind. I 
need not dwell on this to you, mother. 
You know it necessarily.” 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


2 7 


“I know what you mean,” she an- 
swered, in a qualified tone. 

“ Even this old house in which we 
speak,” pursued her son, “is an in- 
stance of what I say. In my father’s 
earlier time, and in his uncle’s time 
before him, it was a place of business, 
— really a place of business, and busi- 
ness resort. Now, it is a mere anomaly 
and incongruity here, out of date, and 
out of purpose. All our consignments 
have long been made to Rovinghams’ 
the commission merchants ; and al- 
though, as a check upon them, and in 
the stewardship of my father’s resources, 
your judgment and watchfulness have 
been actively exerted, still those qual- 
ities would have influenced my father’s 
fortunes equally, if you had lived in any 
private dwelling, would they not ? ” 

“ Do you consider,” she returned, 
without answering his question, “that 
a house serves no purpose, Arthur, in 
sheltering your infirm and afflicted — 
justly infirm and righteously afflicted — 
mother? ” 

“ I was speaking only of business 
purposes.” 

“With what object ? ” 

“ I am coming to it.” 

“I foresee,” she returned, fixing her 
eyes upon him, “what it is. But the 
Lord forbid that I should repine under 
any visitation. In my sinfulness I 
merit bitter disappointment, and I ac- 
cept it.” 

“Mother, I grieve to hear you speak 
like this, though I have had my appre- 
hensions that you would — ” 

“You knew I would. You knew 
me” she interrupted. 

Her son paused for a moment. He 
- had struck fire out of her, and was sur- 
prised. “ Well ! ” she said, relapsing 
iuto stone. “Go on. Let me hear.” 

“You have anticipated, mother, that 
I decide for my part, to abandon the 
business. I have done with it. I will 
not take upon myself to advise you ; 
you will continue it, I see. If I had 
any influence with you, I would simply 
use it to soften your judgment of me in 
causing you this disappointment ; to 
represent to you that I have lived the 
half of a long term of life, and have 
never before set my own will against 


yours. I cannot say that I have been 
able to conform myself, in heart and 
spirit, to your rules ; I cannot say that 
I believe my forty years have been 
profitable or pleasant to myself, or any 
one ; but I have habitually submit- 
ted, and I only ask you to remember 
it.” 

Woe to the suppliant, if such a one 
there were or ever had been, who had 
any concession to look for in the inex- 
orable face at the cabinet. Woe to the 
defaulter whose appeal lay to the tribu- 
nal where those severe eyes presided. 
Great need had the rigid woman of her 
mystical religion, veiled in gloom and 
. darkness, with lightnings of cursing, 
vengeance, and destruction, flashing 
through the sable clouds. Forgive us 
our debts as we forgive our debtors, 
was a prayer too poor in spirit for her. 
Smite thou my debtors, Lord, wither 
them, crush them ; do Thou as I would 
do, and Thou shalt have my worship ; 
this was the impious tower of stone she 
built up to scale Heaven. 

“ Have you finished, Arthur, or have 
you anything more to say to me? I 
think there can be nothing else. You 
have been short, but full of matter ! ” 

“ Mother, I have yet something more 
to say. It has been upon my mind, 
night and day, this long time. It is far 
more difficult to say than what I have 
said. That concerned myself; this 
concerns us all.” 

“Us all! Who are us all?” 

“Yourself, myself, my dead father.” 

She took her hands from the desk, 
folded them in her lap ; and sat looking 
towards the fire, with the impenetrabil- 
ity of an old Egyptian sculpture. 

“ You knew my father infinitely better 
than I ever knew him ; and his reserve 
with me yielded to you. You were much 
the stronger, mother, and directed him. 
As a child, I knew it as well as I know 
it now. I knew that your ascendency 
over him was the cause of his going to 
China to take care of the business there, 
while you took care of it here (though I 
do not even now know whether these 
were really terms of separation that you 
agreed upon) ; and that it was your 
will that I should remain with you until 
I was twenty, and then go to him as I 


28 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


did. You wili not be offended by my 
recalling this, after twenty years?” 

“ I am waiting to hear why you recall 
it.” 

He lowered his voice, and said with 
manifest reluctance, and against his 
will, — 

“ I want to ask you, mother, whether 
it ever occurred to you to suspect — ” 

At the word “ suspect,” she turned her 
eyes momentarily upon her son, with 
a dark frown. She then suffered them 
to seek the fire as before ; but with the 
frown fixed above them, as if the sculp- 
tor of old Egypt had indented it in the 
hard granite face, to frown for ages. 

“ — That he had any secret remem- 
brance which caused him trouble of 
mind — remorse? Whether you ever 
observed anything in his conduct sug- 
gesting that ; or ever spoke to him up- 
on it, or ever heard him hint at such a 
thing? ” 

“ I do not understand what kind of 
secret remembrance you mean to infer 
that your father was a prey to,” she re- 
turned, after a silence. “ You speak so 
mysteriously.” 

“ Is it possible, mother,” her son 
leaned forward to be the nearer to her 
while he whispered it, and laid his hand 
nervously upon her desk, — “is it pos- 
sible, mother, that he had unhappily 
wronged any one, and made no repara- 
tion? ” 

Looking at him wrathfully, she bent 
herself back in her chair to keep him 
farther off, but gave him no reply. 

“ I am deeply sensible, mother, that 
if this thought has never at any time 
flashed upon you, it must seem cruel 
and unnatural in me, even in this con- 
fidence, to breathe it. But I cannot 
shake it off. Time and change (I have 
tried both before breaking silence) do 
nothing to wear it out. Remember, I 
was with my father. Remember, I saw 
his face when he gave the watch into 
my keeping, and struggled to express 
that he sent it as a token you would 
understand, to you. Remember I saw 
him at the last with the pencil in his 
failing hand, trying to write some word 
for you to read, but to which he could 
give no shape. The more remote and 
cruel this vague suspicion that I have, 


the stronger the circumstances that 
could give it any semblance of probabil- 
ity to me. For Heaven’s sake let us 
examine sacredly whether there is any 
wrong intrusted to us to set right. No 
one can help towards it, mother, but 
you.” 

Still so recoiling in her chair that her 
overpoised weight moved it, from time 
to time, a little on its wheels, and gave 
her the appearance of a phantom of fierce 
aspect gliding away from him, she in- 
terposed her left arm, bent at the elbow 
with the back of her hand towards her 
face, between herself and him, and 
looked at him in a fixed silence. 

“ In grasping at money and in driving 
hard bargains, — I have begun, and I 
must speak of such things now, mother, 
— some one may have been grievously 
deceived, injured, ruined. You were the 
moving power of all this machinery be- 
fore my birth ; your stronger spirit has 
been infused into all my father’s deal- 
ings, for more than twoscore years. You 
can set these doubts at rest, I think, if 
you will really help me to discover the 
truth. Will you, mother?” 

He stopped in the hope that she 
would speak. But her gray hair was 
not more immovable in its two folds, 
than were her firm lips. 

“I f reparation can be made to any one, 
if restitution can be made to any one, let 
us know it and make it. Nay, mother, 
if within my means, let me make it. I 
have seen so little happiness come of 
money; it has brought within my 
knowledge so little peace to thte house, 
or to any one belonging to it ; that it is 
worth less to me than to another. It 
can buy me nothing that will not be a 
reproach and misery to me, if I am 
haunted by a suspicion that it dark- 
ened my father’s last hours with re- 
morse, and that is not honestly and 
justly mine.” 

There was a bell-rope hanging on the 
panelled wall, some two or three yards 
from the cabinet. By a swift and sud- 
den action of her foot, she drove her 
wheeled chair rapidly back to it and 
pulled it violently, — still holding her 
arm up in its shield-like posture, as if 
he were striking at her, and she ward- 
ing off the blow. 


MRS. CLENNAM AND ARTHUR CLENNAM. 








































» < 





















































































































LITTLE DORRIT. 


29 


A girl came hurrying in, frightened. 

“ Send Flintwinch here ! ” 

In a moment the girl had withdrawn, 
and the old man stood within the door. 
“ What ! You ’re hammer and tongs 
already, you two ? ” he said, coolly 
stroking his face. “ I thought you 
would be. I was pretty sure of it.” 

“ Flintwinch ! ” said the mother, 
“ look at my son. Look at him ! ” 

“Well! I am looking at him,” said 
Flintwinch. 

She stretched out the arm with which 
she had shielded herself, and as she 
went on pointed at the object of her 
anger. 

“ In the very hour of his return al- 
most, — before the shoe upon his foot 
is dry, — he asperses his father’s mem- 
ory to his mother ! Asks his mother to 
become, with him, a spy upon his father’s 
transactions through a lifetime ! Has 
misgivings that the goods of this world 
which we have painfully got together 
early and late, with wear and tear and 
toil and self-denial, are so much plun- 
der ; and asks to whom they shall be 
given up, as reparation and restitu- 
tion ! ” 

Although she said this raging, she 
said it in a voice so far from being be- 
yond her control, that it was even lower 
than her usual tone. She also spoke 
with great distinctness. 

“ Reparation ! ” said she. “ Yes truly ! 
It is easier for him to talk of reparation, 
fresh from journeying and junketing in 
foreign lands, and living a life of vanity 
and pleasure. But let him look at me, 
in prison, and in bonds here. I endure 
without murmuring, because it is ap- 
pointed that I shall so make reparation 
for my sins. Reparation ! Is there 
none in this room ? Has there been 
none here this fifteen years?” 

Thus was she always balancing her 
bargain with the Majesty of heaven, 
posting up the entries to her credit, 
strictly keeping her set-off, and claim- 
ing her due. She was only remarkable 
in this, for the force and emphasis with 
which she did it. Thousands upon 
thousands do it, according to their vary- 
ing manner, every day. 

“ Flintwinch, give me that book ! ” 

The old man handed it to her from 


the table. She put two fingers between 
the leaves, closed the book upon them, 
and held it up to her son in a threaten- 
ing way. 

“ In the days of old, Arthur, treated 
of in this Commentary, there were 
pious men, beloved of the Lord, who 
would have cursed their sons for less 
than this ; who would have sent them 
forth, and sent whole nations forth, if 
such had supported them, to be avoided 
of God and man, and perish, down to 
the baby at the breast. But I only tell 
you that if you ever renew that theme 
with me, I will renounce you ; I will 
so dismiss you through that doorway, 
that you had better have been mother- 
less from your cradle. I will never see 
or know, you more. And if, after all, 
you were to come into this darkened 
room to look upon me lying dead, my 
body should bleed, if I could make it, 
when you came near me.” 

In part relieved by the intensity of 
this threat, and in part (monstrous as 
the fact is) by a general impression that 
it was in some sort a religious proceed- 
ing, she handed back the book to the 
old man, and was silent. 

“ Now,” said Jeremiah ; “ premising 
that I ’m not going to stand between 
you two, will you let me ask (as I have 
been called in, and made a third) what 
is all this about ? ” 

“ Take your version of it,” returned 
Arthur, finding it left to him to speak, 
“from my mother. Let it rest there. 
What I have said was said to my 
mother only.” 

“ Oh ! ” returned the old man. 
“From your mother? Take it from 
your mother? Well! But your mother 
mentioned that you had been suspecting 
your father. That’s not dutiful, Mr. 
Arthur. Who will you be suspecting 
next ? ” 

“ Enough,” said Mrs. Clennam, turn- 
ing her face so that it was addressed for 
the moment to the old man only. “ Let 
no more be said about this.” 

“Yes, but stop a bit, stop a bit,” the 
old man persisted. “ Let us see how 
we stand. Have you told Mr. Arthur, 
that he must n’t lay offences at his fa- 
ther’s door ? That he has no right to do 
it ? That he has no ground to go upon ? ” 


3 ° 


LITTLE DORR IT. 


“ I tell him so now.” 

“Ah ! Exactly,” said the old man. 
“You tell him so now. You hadn’t 
told him so before, and you tell him 
so now. Ay, ay ! That ’s right ! You 
know I stood between >you and his fa- 
ther so long, that it seems as if death 
had made nb difference, and I was still 
standing between you. So I will, and 
so in fairness I require to have that 
plainly put forward. Arthur, you please 
to hear that you have no right to mis- 
trust your father, and have no ground 
to go upon.” 

He put his hands to the back of the 
wheeled chair, and muttering to him- 
self, slowly wheeled his mistress back 
to her cabinet. “Now,” he resumed, 
standing behind her, “ in case I should 
go away leaving things half done, and 
so should be wanted again when you 
come to the other half and get into one 
of your flights, has Arthur told you what 
he means to do about the business?” 

“ He has relinquished it/’ 

“In favor of nobody, I suppose ? ” 

Mrs. Clennam glanced at her son, 
leaning against one of the windows. 
He observed the look, and said, “To 
my mother, of course. She does what 
she pleases.” 

“ And if any pleasure,” she said after 
a short pause, “could arise for me out 
of the disappointment of my expecta- 
tions, that my son in the prime of his 
life would infuse new youth and strength 
into it, and make it of great profit and 
power, it would be in advancing an 
old and faithful servant. Jeremiah, the 
captain deserts the ship, but you and I 
will sink or float with it.” 

Jeremiah, whose eyes glistened as if 
they saw money, darted a sudden look 
at the son, which seemed to say, “ I 
owe you no thanks for this ; you have 
done nothing towards it!” and then 
told the mother that he thanked her, 
and that Affery thanked her, and that 
he would never desert her, and that 
Affery would never desert her. Finally 
he hauled up his watch from its depths, 
said, “ Eleven. Time for your oys- 
ters ! ” and with that change of subject, 
which involved no change of expression 
or manner, rang the bell. 

But Mrs. Clennam, resolved to treat 


herself with the greater rigor for hav- 
ing been supposed to be unacquainted 
with reparation, refused to eat her oys- 
ters when they were brought. They 
looked tempting ; eight in number, cir- 
cularly set out on a white plate on a 
tray covered with a white napkin, flanked 
by a slice of buttered French roll, and 
a little compact glass of cool wine and 
water ; but she resisted all persuasions, 
and sent them down again, — placing 
the act to her credit, no doubt, in her 
Eternal Day-book. 

This refection of oysters was not pre- 
sided over by Affery, but by the girl who 
had appeared when the bell was rung ; 
the same who had been in the dimly 
lighted room last night. Now that he 
had an opportunity of observing her, 
Arthur found that her diminutive fig- 
ure, small features, and slight spare 
dress gave her the appearance of being 
much younger than she was. A woman, 
probably of not less than two-and-twen- 
ty, she might have been passed in the 
street for little more than half that age. 
Not that her face w'as very youthful, 
for in truth there was more considera- 
tion and care in -it than naturally be- 
longed to her utmost years ; but she 
was so little and light, so noiseless and 
shy, and appeared so conscious of being 
out of place among the three hard el- 
ders, that she had all the manner and 
much of the appearance of a subdued 
child. 

In a hard way, and in an uncertain 
way that fluctuated between patronage 
and putting down, the sprinkling from 
a watering-pot and hydraulic pressure, 
Mrs. Clennam show-ed an interest in 
this dependant. Even in the moment 
of her entrance upon the violent ringing 
of the bell, when the mother shielded 
herself with that singular action from 
the son, Mrs. Clennam’s eyes had had 
some individual recognition in them, 
which seemed reserved for her. As 
there are degrees of hardness in the 
hardest metal, and shades of color in 
black itself, so even in the asperity of 
Mrs. Clennam’s demeanor towards all 
the rest of humanity and towards Little 
Dorrit, there was a fine gradation. 

Little Dorrit let herself out to do 
needle-work. At so much a day, — or 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


3i 


at so little, — from eight to eight, Little 
Dorrit was to be hired. Punctual to 
the moment, Little Dorrit appeared ; 
punctual to the moment, Little Dorrit 
vanished. What became of Little Dor- 
rit between the two eights, was a mys- 
tery. 

Another of the moral phenomena of 
Little Dorrit. Besides her consideration 
money, her daily contract included meals. 
She had an extraordinary repugnance 
to dining in company ; would never do 
so if it were possible to escape. Would 
always plead that she had this bit of 
work to begin first, or that bit of work 
to finish first ; and would, of a certainty, 
scheme and plan — not very cunningly 
it would seem, for she deceived no one, 

— to dine alone. Successful in this, 
happy in carrying off her plate anywhere, 
to make a table of her lap, or a box, or 
the ground, or even as was supposed, 
to stand on tiptoe, dining moderately 
at a mantel-shelf, the great anxiety of 
Little Dorrit’s day was set at rest. 

It was not easy to make out Little 
Dorrit’s face : she was so retiring, plied 
her needle in such removed corners, 
and started away so scared if encoun- 
tered on the stairs. But it seemed to 
be a pale transparent face, quick in 
expression, though not beautiful in fea- 
ture, its soft hazel eyes excepted. A del- 
icately bent head, a tiny form, a quick 
little pair of busy hands, and a shab- 
by dress, — it must needs have been 
very shabby to look at all so, being so 
neat, — were Little Dorrit as she sat at 
work. 

For these particulars or generalities 
concerning Little Dorrit, Mr. Arthur 
was indebted in the course of the day 
to his own eyes and to Mrs. Affery’s 
tongue. If Mrs. Affery had had any 
will or way of her own, it would proba- 
bly have been unfavorable to Little 
Dorrit. But as “ them two clever ones ” 

— Mrs. Affery’s perpetual reference, in 
whom her personality was swallowed 
up — were agreed to accept Little Dor- 
rit as a matter of course, she had noth- 
ing for it but to follow suit. Similarly, 
if the two clever ones had agreed to 
murder Little Dorrit by candle-light, 
Mrs. Affery, being required to hold the 
candle, would no doubt have done it. 


In the intervals of roasting the par- 
tridge for the invalid chamber, and pre- 
paring a baking-dish of beef and pud- 
ding for the dining-room, Mrs. Affery 
made the communications above set 
forth ; invariably putting her head in ate 
the door again after she had taken it 
out, to enforce resistance to the two 
clever ones. It appeared to have be- 
come a perfect passion with Mrs. Flint- 
winch that the only son should be pit- 
ted against them. 

In the course of the day, too, Arthur 
looked through the whole house. Dull 
and dark he found it. The gaunt rooms, 
deserted for years upon years, seemed 
to have settled down into a gloomy 
lethargy from which nothing could 
rouse them again. The furniture, at 
once spare and lumbering, hid in the 
rooms rather than furnished them, and 
there was no color in all the house ; 
such color as had ever been there had 
long ago started away on lost sunbeams, 
got itself absorbed, perhaps, into flow- 
ers, butterflies, plumage of birds, pre- 
cious stones, what not. There was not 
one straight floor, from the foundation 
to the roof ; the ceilings were so fantas- 
tically clouded by smoke and dust, that 
old women might have told fortunes in 
them, better than in grouts of tea ; the 
dead-cold hearths showed no traces of 
having ever been warmed, but in heaps 
of soot that had tumbled down the 
chimneys, and eddied about in little 
dusky whirlwinds when the doors were 
opened. In what had once been a 
drawing-room, there were a pair of 
meagre mirrors, with dismal proces- 
sions of black figures carrying black 
garlands, walking round the frames ; 
but even these were short of heads and 
legs, and one undertaker-like Cupid had 
swung round on his own axis and got 
upside down, and another had fallen 
off altogether. The room Arthur Clen- 
nam’s deceased father had occupied for 
business purposes, when he first re- 
membered him, was so unaltered that he 
might have been imagined still to keep 
it invisibly, as his visible relict kept her 
room up stairs ; Jeremiah Flintwinch 
still going between them negotiating. 
His picture, dark and gloomy, earnestly 
speechless on the wall with the eyes in- 


32 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


tently looking at his son as they had 
looked when life departed from them, 
seemed to urge him awfully to the task 
he had attempted ; but as to any yield- 
ing on the part of his mother, he had 
now no hope, and as to any other 
means of setting his distrust at rest, he 
had abandoned hope a long time. 
Down in the cellars, as up in the bed- 
chambers, old objects that he well re- 
membered were changed by age and 
decay, but were still in their old places ; 
even to empty beer-casks hoary with 
cobwebs, and empty wine-bottles with 
fur and fungus choking up their throats. 
There, too, among unused bottle-racks 
and pale slants of light from the yard 
above, was the strong room stored with 
old ledgers which had as musty and 
corrupt a smell as if they were regularly 
balanced, in the dead small hours, by a 
nightly resurrection of old book-keepers. 

The baking-dish was served up in a 
penitential manner, on a shrunken cloth 
at an end of the dining-table, at two 
o’clock, when he dined with Mr. Flint- 
winch, the new paitner. Mr. Flint- 
winch informed him that his mother 
had recovered her equanimity now, and 
that he need not fear her again alluding 
to what had passed in the morning. 
“ And don’t you lay offences at your 
father’s door, Mr. Arthur,” added Jer- 
emiah, “ once for all, don’t do it ! 
Now, we have done with the subject.” 

Mr. Flintwinch had been already 
rearranging and dusting his own par- 
ticular little office, a^ if to do honor 
to his accession to new dignity. He 
resumed this occupation when he was 
replete with beef, had sucked up all the 
gravy in the baking-dish with the flat 
of his knife, and had drawn liberally on 
a barrel of small beer in the scullery. 
Thus refreshed, he tucked up his shirt- 
sleeves and went to work again ; and 
Mr. Arthur, watching him as he set 
about it, plainly saw that his father’s 
picture, or his father’s grave, would be 
as communicative with him as this old 
man. 

“ Now, Affery, woman,” said Mr. 
Flintwinch, as she crossed the hall. 
“You hadn’t made Mr. Arthur’s bed 
when I was up there last. Stir your- 
self. Bustle.” 


But Mr. Arthur found the house so 
blank and dreary, and was so unwilling 
to assist at another implacable consign- 
ment of his mother’s enemies (perhaps 
himself among them) to mortal dis- 
figurement and immortal ruin, that he 
announced his intention of. lodging at 
the coffee-house where he had left his 
luggage. Mr. Flintwinch taking kindly 
to the idea of getting rid of him, and 
his mother being indifferent, beyond 
considerations of saving, to most domes- 
tic arrangements that were not bounded 
by the walls of her own chamber, he 
easily carried this point without new 
offence. Daily business hours were 
agreed, upon, which his mother, Mr. 
Flintwinch, and he were to devote to- 
gether to a necessary checking of books 
and papers ; and he left the home he had 
so lately found, with a depressed heart. 

But Little Dorrit ? 

The business hours, allowing for in- 
tervals of invalid regimen of oysters and 
partridges, during which Clennam re- 
freshed himself with a walk, were from 
ten to six for about a fortnight. Some- 
times Little Dorrit was employed at 
her needle, sometimes not, sometimes 
appeared as a humble visitor; which 
must , have been her character on the 
occasion of his arrival. His original 
curiosity augmented every day, as he 
watched for her, saw or did not see her, 
and speculated about her. Influenced 
by his predominant idea, he even fell 
into a habit of discussing with himself 
the pcSsibility of her being in some way 
associated with it. At last he resolved 
to watch Little Dorrit and know more 
of her story. 


CFIAPTER VI. 

THE FATHER OF THE MARSHALSEA. 

Thirty years ago there stood, a few 
doors short of the church of Saint 
George, in the Borough of Southwark, 
on the left-hand side of the way going 
southward, the Marshalsea Prison. It 
had stood there many years before, and 
it remained there some years after- 
wards ; but it is gone now, and the 
world is none the worse without it. 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


33 


It was an oblong pile of barrack 
building, partitioned into squalid houses 
standing back to back, so that there 
were no back rooms ; environed by a 
narrow paved yard, hemmed in by high 
wails duly spiked at top. Itself a close 
and confined prison for debtors, it con- 
tained within it a much closer and more 
confined jail for smugglers. Offenders 
against the revenue laws, and default- 
ers to excise or customs, who had in- 
curred fines which they were unable to 
pay, were supposed to be incarcerated 
behind an iron-plated door, closing up 
a second prison, consisting of a strong 
cell or two, and a blind alley some yard 
and a half wide, which formed the mys- 
terious termination of the very limited 
skittle-ground in which the Marshalsea 
debtors bowled down their troubles. 

Supposed to be incarcerated there, 
because the time had rather outgrown 
the strong cells and the blind alley. In 
practice they had come to be considered 
a little too bad, though in theory they 
were quite as good as ever ; which may 
be observed to be the case at the pres- 
ent day with other cells that are not at 
all strong, and with other blind alleys 
that are stone-blind. Hence the smug- 
glers habitually consorted with the debt- 
ors (who received them with open arms), 
except at certain constitutional moments 
when somebody came from some Office, 
to go through some form of overlook- 
ing something, which neither he nor 
anybody else knew anything about. 
On those truly British occasions, the 
smugglers, if any, made a feint of walk- 
ing into the strong cells and the blind 
alley, while this somebody pretended to 
do his something ; and made a reality of 
walking out again as soon as he hadn’t 
done it, — neatly epitomizing the ad- 
ministration of most of the public affairs 
in our right little, tight little island. 

There had been taken to the Mar- 
shalsea Prison, long before the day 
when the stJn shone on Marseilles and 
on the opening of this narrative, a 
debtor with whom this narrative has 
some concern. 

He was, at that time, a very amiable 
and very helpless middle-aged gentle- 
man, who was going out again directly. 
Necessarily he was going out again 

3 


directly, because the Marshalsea lock 
never turned upon a debtor who was not. 
He brought in a portmanteau with him, 
which he doubted its being worth while 
to unpack, he was so perfectly clear — 
like all the rest of them, the turnkey on 
the lock said — that he was going out 
again directly. 

He was a shy, retiring man ; well- 
looking, though in an effeminate style ; 
with a mild voice, curling hair, and ir- 
resolute hands, — rings upon the fingers 
in those days, — which nervously wan- 
dered to his trembling lip a hundred 
times in the first half-hour of his ac- 
quaintance with the jail. His principal 
anxiety was about his wife. 

“Do you think, sir,” he asked the 
turnkey, “ that she wall be very much 
shocked, if she should come to the 
gate to-morrow morning?” 

The turnkey gave it as the result of 
his experience that some of ’em was 
and some of ’em wasn’t. In general, 
more no than yes. “ What like is she, 
you see ? ” he philosophically asked. 
“That’s what it hinges on.” 

“ She _ is very delicate and inexpe- 
rienced indeed.” 

“That,” said the turnkey, “is agen 
her.” 

“ She is so little used to go out 
alone,” said the debtor, “that I am at 
a loss to think how she will ever make 
her way here, if she walks.” 

“ P’r’aps,” quoth the turnkey, “she ’ll 
take a ’ackney-coach.” 

“Perhaps.” The irresolute fingers 
went to the trembling lip. “ I hope 
she will. She may not think of it.” 

“ Or p’r’aps,” said the turnkey, offer- 
ing his suggestions from the top of his 
well-worn wooden stool, as he might 
have offered them to a child for whose 
weakness he felt a compassion, — 
“ p’r’aps she ’ll get her brother or her 
sister to come along with her.” 

“ She has no brother or sister.” 

“ Niece, nevy, cousin, serwant, 
young ’ooman, greengrocer. — Dash 
it ! One or another on ’em,” said the 
turnkey, repudiating beforehand the re- 
fusal of all his suggestions. 

“ I fear — I hope it is not against the 
rules — that she will bring the children.” 

“ The children ? ” said the turnkey. 


34 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


“ And the rules ? Why, lord set you 
up like a corner-pin, vve ’ve a reg’lar 
playground o’ children here. Children ? 
Why, we swarm with ’em. How many 
a you got?” 

“ Two,” said the debtor, lifting his 
irresolute hand to his lip again, and 
turning into the prison. 

The turnkey followed him with his 
eyes. “ And you another,” he ob- 
served to himself, “ which makes three 
on you. And your wife another, I ’ll 
lay a crown. Which makes four on 
you. And another coming, I ’ll lay halt 
a crown. Which ’ll make five on you. 
And I ’ll go another seven and sixpence 
to name which is the helplessest, — the 
unborn baby or you ! ” 

He was right in all his particulars. 
She came, next day, with a little boy 
of three years old and a little girl of 
two, and he stood entirely corrobo- 
rated. 

“ Got a room now, have n’t you ? ” 
the turnkey asked the debtor, after a 
week or two. 

“ Yes, I have got a very good room.” 

“Any little sticks a coming to fur- 
nish it?” said the turnkey. 

“ I expect a few necessary articles of 
furniture to be delivered by the carrier 
this afternoon.” 

“ Missis and little ’uns a coming to 
keep you company ? ” asked the turn- 
key. 

“ Why, yes, we think it better that 
we should not be scattered, even for a 
few weeks.” 

“Even for a few weeks, of course,” 
replied the turnkey. And he followed 
him again with his eyes, and nodded 
his head seven times when he was 
gone. 

The affairs of this debtor were per- 
plexed by a partnership, of which he 
knew no more than that he had invested 
money in it ; by legal matters of assign- 
ment and settlement, conveyance here 
and conveyance there, suspicion of un- 
lawful preference of creditors in this 
direction, and of mysterious spiriting 
away of property in that ; and, as no- 
body on the face of the earth could be 
more incapable of explaining any single 
item in the heap of confusion than the 
debtor himself, nothing comprehensible 


could be made of his case. To ques- 
tion him in detail, and endeavor to 
reconcile his answers, — to closet him 
with accountants and sharp practition- 
ers, learned in the wiles of insolvency 
and bankruptcy, — was only to put the 
case out at compound interest of in- 
comprehensibility. The irresolute fin- 
gers fluttered more and more ineffect- 
ually about the trembling lip on every 
such occasion, and the sharpest prac- 
titioners gave him up as a hopeless 
job. 

“Out?” said the turnkey, “he' 11 
never get out. Unless his creditors 
take him by the shoulders and shove 
him out.” 

He had been there five or six months 
when he came running to this turn- 
key one forenoon to tell him, breath- 
less and pale, that his wife was ill. 

“ As anybody might a known she 
would be,” said the turnkey. 

“We intended,” he returned, “that 
she should go to a country lodging 
only to-morrow. What am I to do ! 
O good Heaven, what am I to do ! ” 

“ Don’t waste your time in clasping 
your hands and biting your fingers,” 
responded the practical turnkey, taking 
him by the elbow, “but come along 
with me.” 

The turnkey conducted him — trem- 
bling from head to foot, and constantly 
crying under his breath, What was he 
to do ! while his irresolute fingers be- 
dabbled the tears upon his face — up 
one of the common staircases in the 
prison, to a door on the garret story. 
Upon which door the turnkey knocked 
with the handle of his key. 

“Come in!” cried a voice inside. 

The turnkey, opening the door, dis- 
closed, in a wretched, ill-smelling little 
room, two hoarse, puffy, red-faced per- 
sonages seated at a rickety table, play- 
ing at all-fours, smoking pipes, and 
drinking brandy. 

“ Doctor,” said the turnkey, “ here ’s 
a gentleman’s wife in want of you with- 
out a minute’s loss of time ! ” 

The Doctor’s friend was in the posi- 
tive degree of hoarseness, puffiness, red- 
facedness, all-fours, tobacco, dirt, and 
brandy ; the Doctor in the comparative, 
— hoarser, puffier, more red-faced, more 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


35 


all-foury, tobaccoer, dirtier, and bran- 
dier. The Doctor was amazingly shab- 
by, in a torn and darned rough-weather 
sea-jacket, out at elbows and eminently 
short of buttons, (he had been in his 
time the experienced surgeon carried by 
a passenger ship,) the dirtiest white 
trousers conceivable by mortal man, 
carpet slippers, and no visible linen. 
“ Childbed? ” said the Doctor. “ I ’m 
the boy!” With that the Doctor took 
a comb from the chimney-piece and 
stuck his hair upright, — which ap- 
peared to be his way of washing himself, 
— produced a professional chest or case, 
of most abject appearance, from the 
cupboard where his cup and saucer and 
coals were, settled his chin in the frow- 
zy wrapper round his neck, and became 
a ghastly medical scarecrow. 

The Doctor and the debtor ran down 
stairs, leaving the turnkey to return to 
the lock, and made for the debtor’s 
room. All the ladies in the prison had 
got hold of the news, and were in the 
yard. Some of them had already taken 
possession of the two children, and 
were hospitably carrying them off ; 
others were offering loans of little com- 
forts from their own scanty store ; 
others were sympathizing with the 
greatest volubility. The gentlemen 
prisoners, feeling themselves at a dis- 
advantage, had for the most part re- 
tired, not to say sneaked, to their rooms; 
from the open windows of which, some 
of them now complimented the Doctor 
with whistles as he passed below, while 
others,, with several stories between 
them, interchanged sarcastic references 
to the prevalent excitement. 

It was a hot summer day, and the 
prison rooms were baking between the 
high walls. In the debtor’s confined 
chamber, Mrs. Bangham, charwoman 
and messenger, who was not a prisoner 
(though she had been once), but was 
the popular medium of communication 
with the outer world, had volunteered 
her services as fly-catcher and general 
attendant. The walls and ceiling were 
blackened with flies. Mrs. Bangham, 
expert in sudden device, with one hand 
fanned the patient with a cabbage-leaf, 
and with the other set traps of vinegar 
and sugar in gallipots ; at the same time 


enunciating sentiments of an encourag- 
ing and congratulatory nature, adapted 
to the occasion. 

“ The flies trouble you, don’t they, 
my dear? ” said Mrs. Bangham. “ But 
p’r’aps they ’ll take your mind off of it, 
and do you good. What between the 
buryin-ground, the grocer’s, the wagon- 
stables, and the paunch trade, the Mar- 
shalsea flies gets very large. P’r’aps 
they ’re sent, as a consolation, if we 
only know’d it. How are you now, my 
dear? No better? No, my dear, it 
ain’t to be expected ; you ’ll be worse 
before you ’re better, and you know it, 
don’t you ? Yes. That ’s right ! And 
to think of a sweet little cherub being 
born inside the lock ! Now ain’t it 
pretty, ain’t that something to carry you 
through it pleasant ? Why, we ain’t 
had such a thing happen here, my dear, 
not for I couldn’t name the time when. 
And you a crying too?” said Mrs. 
Bangham, to rally the patient more and 
more. You ! Making yourself so fa- 
mous ! With the flies a falling into 
the gallipots by fifties ! And every- 
thing a going on so well ! And here 
if there ain’t,” said Mrs. Bangham, as 
the door opened, — “ if there ain’t your 
dear gentleman along with Doctor 
Haggage ! And now indeed we are 
complete, I think ! ” 

The Doctor was scarcely the kind of 
apparition to inspire a patient with a 
sense of absolute completeness, but as 
he presently delivered the opinion, 
“We are as right as we can be, Mrs. 
Bangham, and we shall come out of 
this like a house afire ” ; and as he and 
Mrs. Bangham took possession of the 
poor, helpless pair, as everybody else 
and anybody else had always done ; 
the means at hand were as good on the 
whole as better would have been. The 
special feature in Dr. Haggage’s treat- 
ment of the case was his determination 
to keep Mrs. Bangham up to the mark. 
As thus - 

“ Mrs. Bangham,” said the Doctor, 
before he had been there twenty min- 
utes, “ go outside and fetch a little 
brandy, or we shall have you giving 
in.” 

“ Thank you sir. But none on my 
accounts,” said Mrs. Bangham. 


36 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


“ Mrs. Bangham,” returned the Doc- 
tor, “I am in professional attendance 
on this lady, and don’t choose to allow 
any discussion on your part. Go out- 
side and fetch a little brandy, or I fore- 
see that you’ll break down.” 

“ You ’re to be obeyed, sir,” said Mrs. 
Bangham, rising. ‘‘If you was to put 
your own lips to it, I think you would n’t 
be the worse, for you look but poorly, 
sir.” 

“ Mrs. Bangham,” returned the Doc- 
tor, “ I am not your business, thank 
you, but you are mine. Never you 
mind me, if you please. What you 
have got to do, is, to do as you are 
told, and to go and get what I bid 
you.” 

Mrs. Bangham submitted ; and the 
Doctor, having administered her potion, 
took his own. He repeated the treat- 
ment every hour, being very determined 
with Mrs. Bangham. Three or four 
hours passed ; the flies fell into the 
traps by hundreds ; and at length one 
little life, hardly stronger than theirs, 
appeared among the multitude of lesser 
deaths. 

“ A very nice little girl indeed,” said 
the Doctor; “little, but well formed. 
Halloa, Mrs. Bangham ! You ’re look- 
ing queer ! You be off, ma’am, this 
minute, and fetch a little more brandy, 
or we shall have you in hysterics.” 

By this time, the rings had begun to 
fall from the debtor’s irresolute hands, 
like leaves from a wintry tree. Not 
one was left upon them that night, 
when he put something that chinked 
into the Doctor’s greasy palm. In the 
mean time Mrs. Bangham had been out 
an errand to a neighboring establish- 
ment decorated with three golden balls, 
where she was very well known. 

“Thank you,” said the Doctor, — 
“thank you. Ypur good lady is quite 
composed. Doing charmingly.” 

“ I am very happy and very thankful 
to know it,” said the debtor, “though 
I little thought once, that — ” 

“ That a child would be born to you 
in a place like this ? ” said the Doctor. 
“ Bah, bah, sir, what does it signify ? 
A little more elbow-room is all we want 
here. We are quiet here ; we don’t get 
badgered here ; there ’s no knocker here, 


sir, to be hammered at by creditors and 
bring a man’s heart into his mouth. 
Nobody comes here to ask if a man’s 
at home, and to say he ’ll stand on the 
door-mat till he is. Nobody writes 
threatening letters about money to this 
place. It ’s freedom, sir, it ’s freedom ! 

I have had to-day’s practice at home 
and abroad, on a march, and aboard 
ship, and I ’ll tell you this : I don’t 
know that I have ever pursued it under 
such quiet circumstances as here this 
day. Elsew-here, people are restless, 
worried, hurried about, anxious respect- 
ing one thing, anxious respecting an- 
other. Nothing of the kind here, sir. 
We have done all that, — we know the 
worst of it ; we have got to the bottom, 
we can’t fall, and what have we found ? 
Peace. That ’s the word for it. Peace.” 
With this profession of faith, the Doctor, 
who was an old jail-bird, and w'as more 
sodden than usual, and had the addi- 
tional and unusual stimulus of money 
in his pocket, returned to his associate 
and chum in hoarseness, puffiness, red- 
facedness, all-fours, tobacco, dirt, and 
brandy. 

Now', the debtor was a very different 
man from the Doctor, but he had already 
begun to travel, by his opposite segment 
of the circle, to the same point. Crushed 
at first by his imprisonment, he had soon 
found a dull relief in it. He was under 
lock and key ; but the lock and key 
that kept him in kept numbers of his 
troubles out. If he had been, a man 
with strength of purpose to face those 
troubles and fight them, he might have 
broken the net that held him, or broken 
his heart ; but being w'hat he w'as, he 
languidly slipped into this smooth de- 
scent, and nevermore took one step 
upw'ard. _ 

When he w'as relieved of the per^R 
plexed affairs that nothing w'ould makeltj 
plain, through having them returned ™ 
upon his hands by a dozen agents in 
succession who could make neither be- 
ginning, middle, nor end of them, or 
him, he found his miserable place of 
refuge a quieter refuge than it had been 
before. He had unpacked the port- 
manteau long ago ; and his elder chil- 
dren now played regularly about the 
yard, and everybody knew the baby, 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


37 


and claimed a kind of proprietorship in 
her. 

“Why, I’m getting proud of you,” 
said his friend the turnkey, one day. 
“You’ll be the oldest inhabitant soon. 
The Marshalsea would n’t be like the 
Marshalsea now, without you and your 
family.” 

The turnkey really was proud of him. 
He would mention him in laudatory 
terms to new-comers, when his back 
was turned. “You took notice of him ” 
lie would say, “that went out of the 
lodge just now?” 

New-comer would probably answer, 
Yes. 

“ Brought up as a gentleman, he was, 
if ever a man was. Ed’cated at no end 
of expense. Went into the Marshal’s 
house once, to try a new piano for him. 
Played it, I understand, like one o’clock 
— beautiful ! As to languages, — speaks 
anything. We’ve had a Frenchman 
here in his time, and it ’s my opinion 
he knowed more French than the 
Frenchman did. We ’ve had an Italian 
here in his time, and he shut him up in 
about half a minute. You ’ll find some 
characters behind other locks, I don’t 
say you won’t ; but if you want the top 
sawyer, in such respects as I ’ve men- 
tioned, you must come to the Marshal- 
sea.” 

When his youngest child was eight 
years old, his wife, who had long been 
languishing away, — of her own inhe- 
rent weakness, not that she retained 
any greater sensitiveness as to her place 
of abode than he did, — went upon a 
visit to a poor friend and old nurse in 
the country, and died there. He re- 
mained shut up in his room for a fort- 
night afterwards ; and an attorney’s 
clerk, who was going through the In- 
solvent Court, engrossed an address of 
condolence to him, which looked like 
fn Lease, and which all the prisoners 
^signed. When he appeared again he 
was grayer (he had soon begun to turn 
gray) ; and the turnkey noticed that his 
hands went often to his trembling lips 
again, as they had used to do when he 
first came in. But he got pretty well 
over it in a month or two ; and in the 
mean time the children played about the 
yard as regularly as ever, but in black. 


Then Mrs. Bangham, long popular 
medium of communication with the 
outer world, began to be infirm, and to 
be found oftener than usual comatose 
on pavements, with her basket of pur- 
chases spilt, and the change of her 
clients ninepence short. His son began 
to supersede Mrs. Bangham, and to ex- 
ecute commissions in a knowing man- 
ner, and to be of the prison prisonous, 
and of the streets streety. 

Time went on, and the turnkey began 
to fail. His chest swelled, and his legs 
got weak, and he was short of breath. 
The well-worn wooden stool was “ be- 
yond him,” he complained. He sat in 
an arm-chair with a cushion, and some- 
times wheezed so, for minutes together, 
that he couldn’t turn the key. When 
he was overpowered by these fits, the 
debtor often turned it for him. 

“You and me,” said the turnkey, one 
snowy winter’s night, when the lodge, 
with a bright fire in it, was pretty full 
of company, “ is the oldest inhabitants. 
I was n’t here myself, above seven year 
before you. I sha’n’t last long. When 
I ’m off the lock for good and all, you ’ll 
be the Father of the Marshalsea.” 

The turnkey went off the lock of this 
world next day. His words were re- 
membered and repeated ; and tradition 
afterwards handed down from genera- 
tion to generation — a Marshalsea gen- 
eration might be calculated as about 
three months — that the shabby old 
debtor with the soft manner and the 
white hair was the Father of the Mar- 
shalsea. 

And he grew to be proud of the title. 
If any impostor had arisen to claim it, 
he would have shed tears in resentment 
of the attempt to deprive him of his 
rights. A disposition began to be per- 
ceived in him to exaggerate the num- 
ber of years he had been there ; it was 
generally understood that you must de- 
duct a few from his account ; he was 
vain, the fleeting generations of debtors 
said. 

All new-comers were presented to 
him. He was punctilious in the exac- 
tion of this ceremony. The wits would 
perform the office of introduction with 
overcharged pomp and politeness, but 
they could not easily overstep his sense 


3 § 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


of its gravity. He received them in his 
poor room (he disliked an introduction 
m the mere yard, as informal, — a thing 
that might happen to anybody), with a 
kind of bowed-down beneficence. They 
were welcome to the Marshalsea, he 
would tell them. Yes, he was the Fa- 
ther of the place. So the world was 
kind enough to call him ; and so he 
•was, if more than twenty years of resi- 
dence gave him a claim to the title. It 
looked small at first, but there was very 
good company there — among a mix- 
ture — necessarily a mixture — and very 
good air. 

It became a not unusual circumstance 
for letters to be put under his door at 
night, enclosing half a crown, two half- 
crowns, now and then at long intervals 
even half a sovereign, for the Father 
of the Marshalsea. “ With the compli- 
ments of a collegian taking leave.” He 
received the gifts as tributes, from ad- 
mirers, to a public character. Some- 
times these correspondents assumed 
facetious names, as the Brick, Bellows, 
Old Gooseberry, Wideawake, Snooks, 
Mops, Cutaway, the Dogsmeat Man ; 
but he considered this in bad taste, and 
was always a little hurt by it. 

In the fulness of time, this corre- 
spondence showing signs of wearing 
out, and seeming to require an effort on 
the part of the correspondents to which 
in the hurried circumstances of depart- 
ure many of them might not be equal, 
he established the custom of attending 
collegians of a certain standing to the 
gate, and taking leave of them there. 
The collegian under treatment, after 
shaking hands, would occasionally stop 
to wrap up something in a bit of paper, 
and would come back again, calling 
“Hi ! ” 

He would look round surprised. 
“Me?” he would say. with a smile. 

By this time the collegian would be 
up with him, and he would paternally 
add, “ What have you forgotten ? 
What can I do for you ? ” 

“ I forgot to leave this,” the collegian 
would usually return, “for the Father 
of the Marshalsea.” 

“My good sir,” he would rejoin, 
“he is infinitely obliged to you.” But, 
to the last, the irresolute hand of old I 


would remain in the pocket into which 
he had slipped the money, during two 
or three turns about the yard, lest the 
transaction should be too conspicuous 
to the general body of collegians. 

One afternoon he had been doing the 
honors of the place to a rather large 
party of collegians, who happened to be 
oing out, when, as he was coming 
ack, he encountered one from the poor 
side who had been taken in execution 
for a small sum a week before, had 
“settled” in the course of that after- 
noon, and was going out too. The man 
was a mere Plasterer in his working- 
dress, had his wife with him, and a 
bundle, and was in high spirits. 

“ God bless you, sir,” he said in pass- 
ing. 

“ And you,” benignantly returned the 
Father of the Marshalsea. 

They were pretty far divided, going 
their several ways, when the Plasterer 
called out, “ I say ! — sir ! ” and came 
back to him. 

“It ain’t much,” said the Plasterer, 
putting a little pile of half pence in his 
hand, “but it’s well meant.” 

The Father of the Marshalsea had 
never been offered tribute in copper 
yet. His children often had, and with 
his perfect acquiescence it had gone 
into the common purse to buy meat 
that he had eaten, and drink that he 
had drunk ; but fustian splashed with 
white lime, bestowing half-pence on 
him, front to front, was new. 

“ How dare you ! ” he said to the 
man, and feebly burst into tears. 

The Plasterer turned him towards 
the wall, that his face might not be 
seen ; and the action was so delicate, 
and the man was so penetrated with 
repentance, and asked pardon so hon- 
estly, that he could make him no les^A 
acknowledgment than, “ I know yo«f — 
meant it kindly. Say no more.” 

“ Bless your soul, sir,” urged th^B 
Plasterer, “ I did indeed. I ’d do more^ 
by you than the rest of ’em do, I fancy.” 

“ What would you do? ” he asked. 

“ I ’d come back to See you, after I 
was let out.” 

“ Give me the money again,” said 
the other, eagerly, “ and I ’ll keep 
it, and never spend it. Thank you 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


39 


for it, thank you ! I shall see you 
again ? ” 

“ If I live a week you shall.” 

They shook hands and parted. The 
collegians, assembled in Symposium in 
the Snuggery that night, marvelled 
what had happened to their Father ; he 
walked so late in the shadows of the 
yard, and seemed so downcast. 


CHAPTER VII. 

THE CHILD OF THE MARSHALSEA. 

The baby whose first draught of air 
had been tinctured with Doctor Hag- 
gage’s brandy was handed down among 
the generations of collegians, like the 
tradition of their common parent. In 
the earlier stages of her existence, she 
was handed down in a literal and pro- 
saic sense ; it being almost a part of the 
entrance footing of every new collegian 
to nurse the child who had been born 
in the college. 

“ By rights,” remarked the turnkey, 
when she was first shown to him, “ I 
ought to be her godfather.” 

The debtor irresolutely thought of it 
for a minute, and said, “ Perhaps you 
would n’t object to really being her god- 
father? ” 

“ Oh ! / don’t object,” replied the 
turnkey, “if you don’t.” 

Thus it came to pass that she was 
christened one Sunday afternoon, when 
the turnkey, being relieved, was off the 
lock: and that the turnkey went up to 
the font of Saint George’s church, and 
promised and vowed and renounced on 
her behalf, as he himself related when 
he came back, “like a good ’un.” 

This invested the turnkey with a new 
^proprietary share in the child, over and 
above his former official one. When 
^he began to walk and talk, he became 
fond of her; bought a little arm-chair 
and stood it by the high fender of the 
lodge fireplace ; liked to have her com- 
pany when he was on the lock ; and 
used to bribe her with cheap toys to 
come and talk to him. The child, for 
her part, soon grew so fond of the turn- 
key, that she would come climbing up the 


lodge steps of her own accord at all 
hours of the day. When she fell asleep 
in the little arm-chair by the high fender, 
the turnkey would cover her with his 
pocket-handkerchief; and w hen she sat 
in it dressing and undressing a doll, — 
which soon came to be unlike dolls on 
the other side of the lock, and to bear 
a horrible family resemblance to Mrs. 
Bangham, — he w'ould contemplate her 
from the top of his stool, with ex- 
ceeding gentleness. Witnessing these 
things, the collegians would express an 
opinion that the turnkey, who was a 
bachelor, had been cut out by nature 
for a family man. But the turnkey 
thanked them, and said, “No, on the 
whole it was enough for him to see 
other people’s children there.” 

At what period of her early life the 
little creature began to perceive that it 
was not the habit of all the world to 
live locked up in narrow yards sur- 
rounded by high walls w'ith spikes at 
the top, w'ould be a difficult question to 
settle. But she w'as a very, very little 
creature indeed, when she had some- 
how' gained the knowledge that her 
clasp cf her father’s hand was to be al- 
ways loosened at the door which the 
great key opened ; and that while her 
owm light steps were free to pass be- 
yond it, his feet must never cross that 
line. A pitiful and plaintive look, w'ith 
which she had begun to regard him 
when she was still extremely young, 
was perhaps a part of this discovery. 

With a pitiful and plaintive look 
for everything indeed, but with some- 
thing in it for only him that w T as like 
protection, this Child of the Marshalsea 
and child of the Father of the Marshal- 
sea sat by her friend the turnkey in the 
lodge, kept the family-room, or wan- 
dered about the prison-yard, for the 
first eight years of her life. With a 
pitiful and plaintive look for her way- 
ward sister ; for her idle brother ; for the 
high blank walls ; for the faded crowd 
they shut in ; for the games of the 
prison children as they wliooped and 
ran, and played at hide-and-seek, and 
made the iron bars of the inner gateway 
“ Home.” 

Wistful and wondering, she would 
sit in summer weather by the high fen- 


4° 


LITTLE DORRIT 


dcr in the lodge, looking up at the sky 
through the barred window, until bars 
of light would arise, when she turned 
her eyes away, between her and her 
friend, and she would see him through 
a grating, too. 

“Thinking of the fields,” the turn- 
key said once, after watching her, 
“ain’t you?” 

“ Where are they? ” she inquired. 

f Why, they ’re — over there, my 
r,” said the turnkey, with a vague 
flourish of his key. “Just about 
there.” 

“Does anybody open them, and shut 
them ? Are they locked ? ” 

The turnkey was discomfited. “ Well ! ” 
he said. “ Not in general.” 

“Are they very pretty, Bob?” She 
called him Bob, by his own particular 
request and instruction. 

“Lovely. Full of flowers. There’s 
buttercups, and there ’s daisies, and 
there ’s ” — the turnkey hesitated, being 
short of floral nomenclature — “there ’s 
dandelions, and all manner of games.” 

“Is it verv pleasant to be there, 
Bob?” 

“ Prime,” said the turnkey. 

“ Was father ever there? ” 

“ Hem ! ” coughed the turnkey. “ O 
yes, he was there sometimes.” 

“ Is he sorry not to be there now ? ” 

“ N — not particular,” said the turn- 
key. 

“Nor any of the people ? ” she asked, 
glancing at the listless crowd within. 
“ O, are you quite sure and certain, 
Bob?” 

At this difficult point of the conversa- 
tion Bob gave in, and changed the sub- 
ject to hard-bake : always his last re- 
source when he found his little friend 
getting him into a political, social, or 
theological corner. But this was the 
origin of a series of Sunday excursions 
that these two curious companions 
made together. They used to issue 
from the lodge on alternate Sunday af- 
ternoons with great gravitv, bound for 
some meadow's or green lanes that had 
been elaborately appointed by the turn- 
key in the course of the week ; and 
there she picked grass and flowers to 
bring home, while he smoked his pipe. 
Afterwards, there were tea-gardens, 


shrimps, ale, and other delicacies ; and 
then they would come back hand in 
hand, unless she w-as more than usually 
tired, and had fallen asleep on his 
shoulder. 

In those early days, the turnkey first 
began profoundly to consider a question 
which cost him so much mental labor, 
that ity^emained undetermined on the 
day <5frcis death. He decided to will 
and bequeath'' his little property of 
savings to his godchild, and the point 
arose how could it be so “ tied up,” 
as that only she should have the 
benefit of it? His experience on the 
lock gave him such an acute perception 
of the enormous difficulty of “ tying 
up ” money with any approach to tight- 
ness, and contrariwise of the remarka- 
ble ease with wdnch it got loose, that 
through a series of years he regularly 
propounded this knotty point to every 
new insolvent agent and other profes- 
sional gentleman who passed in and 
out. 

“ Supposing,” he would say, stating 
the case with his key, on the profes- 
sionalgentleman’swaistcoat, — “suppos- 
ing a man wanted to leave his property 
to a young female, and wanted to tie it 
up so that nobody else should ever be 
able to make a grab at it ; how would 
you tie up that property? ” 

“ Settle it strictly on herself,” the 
professional gentleman would compla- 
cently answer. 

“ But look here,” quoth the turnkey. 

“ Supposing she had, say a brother, say 
a father, say a husband, who would be 
likely to make a grab at that property 
when she came into it, — how about 
that?” 

“ It w'ould be settled on herself, and 
they would have no more legal claim 
on it than you,” would be the profe^ 
sional answer. 

“ Stop _ a bit,” said the turnke|H 
“ Supposing she was tender-hearted^ 
and they came over her. Where ’s your 
law for tying it up then ? ” 

The deepest character whom the turn- 
key sounded was unable to produce his 
law for tying such a knot as that. So 
the turnkey thought about it all his life, 
and died intestate after all. 

But that was long afterwards, when 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


4i 


his god-daughter was past sixteen. The 
first half of that space of her life was 
only just accomplished, when her pitiful 
and plaintive look saw her father a wid- 
ower. From that time the protection 
that her wondering eyes had expressed 
towards him became embodied in ac- 
tion, and the Child of the Marshalsea 
took upon herself a new relation to- 
wards the Father. 

As first, such a baby could do little 
more than sit with him, deserting her 
livelier place by the high fender, and 
quietly watching him. But this made 
her so far necessary to him that he be- 
came accustomed to her, and began to 
be sensible of missing her when she was 
not there. Through this little gate, she 
passed out of childhood into the care- 
laden world. 

What her pitiful look saw, at that 
early time, in her father, in her sister, 
in her brother, in the jail ; how much, 
or how little of the wretched truth it 
pleased God to make visible to her ; 
lies hidden with many mysteries. It 
is enough that she was inspired to be 
something which was not what the rest 
were, and to be that something, differ- 
ent and laborious, for the sake of the 
rest. Inspired ? Yes. Shall we speak 
of the inspiration of a poet or a priest, 
and not of the heart impelled by love 
and self-devotion to the lowliest work 
in the lowliest way of life ! 

With no earthly friend to help her, or 
so much as to see her, but the one so 
strangely assorted ; with no knowledge 
even of the common daily tone and 
habits of the common members of the 
free community who are not shut up in 
prisons ; born and bred, in a social con- 
dition, false even with a reference to 
the falsest condition outside the walls ; 
drinking from infancy of a well whose 
waters had their own peculiar stain, 
their own unwholesome and unnatural 
■taste ; the Child of the Marshalsea be- 
gan her womanly life. 

No matter through what mistakes and 
discouragements, what ridicule (not un- 
kindly meant, but deeply felt) of her 
youth and little figure, what humble 
consciousness of her own babyhood and 
want of strength, even in the matter of 
lifting and carrying ; through how much 


weariness and hopelessness, and how 
many secret tears ; she trudged on, un- 
til recognized as useful, even indispen- 
sable. That time came. She took the 
place of eldest of the three, in all things 
but precedence ; was the head of the 
fallen family ; and bore, in her own 
heart, its anxieties and shames. 

At thirteen, she could read and keep 
accounts, — that is, could put down jn 
words and figures how much the bare 
necessaries that they wanted would cost, 
and how much, less they had to buy 
them with. She had been, by snatches 
of a few weeks at a time, to an evening 
school outside, and got her sister and 
brother sent to day schools by desul- 
tory starts, during three or four years. 
There was no instruction for any of 
them at home ; but she knew well — no 
one better — that a man so broken as 
to be the Father of the Marshalsea 
could be no father to his own children. 

To these scanty means of improve- 
ment she added another of her own 
contriving. Once, among the heteroge- 
neous crowd of inmates there appeared 
a dancing-master. Her sister had a 
great desire to learn the dancing-mas- 
ter’s art, and seemed to have a taste 
that way. At thirteen years old, the 
Child of the Marshalsea presented her- 
self to the dancing-master, with a little 
bag in her hand, and preferred her 
humble petition. 

“If you please, I was born here, 
sir.” 

“ Oh ! You are the young lady, are 
you ? ” said the dancing-master, sur- 
veying the small figure and uplifted 
face. 

“ Yes, sir.” 

“ And what can I do for you ? ” said 
the dancing-master. 

“ Nothing for me, sir, thank you,” 
anxiously undrawing the strings of the 
little bag : “but if, while you stay here, 
you could be so kind as to teach my 
sister cheap — ” 

“My child, I ’ll teach her for noth- 
ing,” said the dancing-master, shutting 
up the bag. He was as good-natured a 
dancing-master as ever danced to the 
Insolvent Court, and he kept his word. 
The sister was so apt a pupil, and the 
dancing-master had such abundant leis- 


42 


LITTLE D0RR1T. 


tire to bestow upon her (for it took 
him a matter of ten weeks to set to 
his creditors, lead off, turn the Commis- 
sioners, and right and left back to his 
professional pursuits), that wonderful 
progress' was made. Indeed, the dan- 
cing-master was so proud of it, and so 
wishful to display it before he left to a 
few select friends among the collegians, 
that at six o’clock on a certain fine 
morning a minuet de la cour came off 
in the yard, — the college-rooms being 
of too confined proportions for the pur- 
pose, — in which so much ground was 
covered, and the steps were so conscien- 
tiously executed, that the dancing-mas- 
ter, having to play the kit besides, was 
thoroughly blown. 

The success of this beginning, which 
led to the dancing-master’s continuing 
his instruction after his release, em- 
boldened the poor child to try again. 
She watched and waited months for a 
seamstress. In the fulness of time a 
milliner came in, and to her she re- 
paired on her own behalf. 

“ I beg your pardon, ma’am,” she 
said, looking timidly round the door of 
the milliner, whom she found in tears 
and in bed; “but I was born here.” 

Everybody seemed to hear of her as 
soon as they arrived ; for the milliner 
sat up in bed, drying her eyes, and 
said, just as the dancing-master had 
said, — 

“ Oh ! You are the child, are you ?” 

“ Yes, ma’am.” 

“ I am sorry I have n’t got anything 
for you,” said the milliner, shaking her 
head. 

“It’s not that, ma’am. If you 
please, I want to learn needle-work.” 

“Why should you do that,” returned 
the milliner, “ with me before you? It 
has not done me much good.” 

“Nothing — whatever it is — seems 
to have done anybody much good who 
comes here,” she returned, in all sim- 
plicity ; “ but I want to learn just the 
same.” 

“ I am afraid you are so weak, you 
see,” the milliner objected. 

“ I don’t think I am weak, ma’am.” 

“ And you are so very, very little, 
you see,” the milliner objected. 

“Yes, I am afraid I am very little 


indeed,” returned the Child of the 
Marshalsea, and so began to sob over 
that unfortunate defect of hers, which 
came so often in her way. The mil- 
liner — who was not morose or hard- 
hearted, only newly insolvent — was 
touched, took her in hand with good- 
will, found her the most patient and 
earnest of pupils, and made her a cun- 
ning workwoman in course of time. 

In course of time, and in the very 
selfsame course of time, the Father of 
the Marshalsea gradually developed a 
new flower of character. The more 
Fatherly he grew as to the Marshalsea, 
and the more dependent he became on 
the contributions of his changing fam- 
ily, the greater stand he made by his 
forlorn gentility. With the sarpe hand 
that had pocketed a collegian’s half- 
crown half an hour ago he would wipe 
away the tears that streamed over his 
cheeks if any reference were made to 
his daughters’ earning their bread. So, 
over and above her other daily cares, 
the Child of the Marshalsea had always 
upon her the care of preserving the 
genteel fiction that they were all idle 
beggars together. 

The sister became a dancer. There 
was a ruined uncle in the family group 
— ruined by his brother, the Father of 
the Marshalsea, and knowing no more 
how than his ruiner did, but accepting 
the fact as an inevitable certainty — on 
whom her protection devolved. Natu- 
rally a retired and simple man, he had 
shown no particular sense of being 
ruined at the time when that calamity 
fell upon him, further than that he left 
off washing himself when the shock 
was announced, and never took to that 
luxury any more. He had been a very 
indifferent musical amateur in his better 
days, and when he fell with his brothen^A 
resorted for support to playing a clar-;aj 
ionet as dirty as himself in a sinalf 3 ^ 
theatre orchestra. It was the theatre 
in which his niece became a dancer; 
he had been a fixture there a long time 
when she took her poor station in it ; 
and he accepted the task of serving as 
her escort and guardian, just as he 
would have accepted an illness, a leg- 
acy, a feast, starvation, — anything but 
soap. 


LITTLE DORR IT. 


43 


To enable this girl to earn her few 
weekly shillings, it was necessary for 
the Child of the Marshalsea to go 
through an elaborate form with the 
Father. 

“ Fanny is not going to live with us, 
just now, father. She will be here a 
good deal in the day, but she is going 
to live outside with uncle.” 

“ You surprise me. Why ? ” 

“ I think uncle wants a companion, 
father. He should be attended to, and 
looked after.” 

“ A companion ? He passes much of 
his time here. And you attend to him 
and look after him, Amy, a great deal 
more than ever your sister will. You 
all go out so much, — you all go out so 
much.” 

This was to keep up the ceremony 
and pretence of his having no idea that 
Amy herself went out by the day to 
work. 

“ But we are always very glad to 
come home, father ; now, are we not ? 
And as to Fanny, perhaps besides 
keeping uncle company, and taking 
care of him, it may be as well for her 
not quite to live here, always. She was 
not born here as I was, you know, fa- 
ther.” 

“ Well, Amy, well. I don’t quite 
follow you, but it ’s natural, I suppose, 
that Fanny should prefer to be outside, 
and even that you often should, too. 
So, you and Fanny and your uncle, my 
dear, shall have your own way. Good, 
good. I ’ll not meddle ; don’t mind 
me.” 

To get her brother out of the prison ; 
•out of the succession to Mrs. Bangham 
in executing commissions, and out of 
the slang interchange with very doubt- 
ful companions, consequent upon both, 
was her hardest task. At eighteen he 
■ would have dragged on from" hand to 
mouth, from hour to hour, from penny 
to penny, until eighty. Nobody got 
into the prison from whom he derived 
anything useful or good, and she could 
find no patron for him but her old 
friend and godfather. 

“Dear Bob,” said she, “what is to 
become of poor Tip? ” His name was 
Edward, and Ted had been transformed 
into Tip within the walls. 


The turnkey had strong private opin- 
ions as to what would become of poor 
Tip, and had even gone so far with the 
view of averting their fulfilment, as to 
sound Tip in reference to the expedi- 
ency of running away and going to 
serve his country. But Tip had 
thanked him, and said he did n’t seem 
to care for his country. 

“ Well, my dear,” said the turnkey, 
“something ought to be done with him. 
Suppose I try and get him into the 
law ? ’ ’ 

“ That would be so good of you, 
Bob ! ” 

The turnkey had now two points to 
put to the professional gentlemen as 
they passed in and out. He put this 
second one so perseveringly that a stool 
and twelve shillings a week were at last 
found for Tip in the office of an attorney 
in a great National Palladium called 
the Palace Court ; at that time one of 
a considerable list of everlasting bul- 
warks to the dignity and safety of Al- 
bion whose places know them no more. 

Tip languished in Clifford’s Inn for 
six months, and at the expiration of 
that term sauntered back one evening 
with his hands in his pockets, and in- 
cidentally observed to his sister that he 
was not going back again. 

“Not going back again?” said the 
poor little anxious Child of the Mar- 
shalsea, always calculating and plan- 
ning for Tip in the front rank of her 
charges. 

“ i am so tired of it,” said Tip, “that 
I have cut it.” 

Tip tired of everything. With inter- 
vals of Marshalsea lounging, and Mrs. 
Bangham succession, his small second 
mother, aided by her trusty friend, got 
him into a warehouse, into a market 
garden, into the hop trade, into the law 
again, into an auctioneer’s, into a brew- 
ery, into a stockbroker’s, into the law 
again, into a coach office, into a wagon 
office, into the law again, into a general 
dealer’s, into a distillery, into the law 
again, into a wool house, into a dry- 
goods house, into the Billingsgate trade, 
into the foreign fruit trade, and into the 
docks. But whatever Tip went into, 
he came out of tired, announcing that 
he had cut it. Wherever he went, this 


44 


LITTLE D ORE IT. 


foredoomed Tip appeared to take the 
prison walls with him, and to set them 
up in such trade or calling ; and to 
prowl about within their narrow limits 
in the old slip-shod, purposeless, down- 
at-heel way ; until the real immovable 
Marshalsea walls asserted their fascina- 
tion over him, and brought him back. 

Nevertheless, the brave little creature 
did so fix her heart on her brother’s 
rescue, that while he was ringing out 
these doleful changes, she pinched and 
scraped enough together to ship him for 
Canada. When he was tired of noth- 
ing to do, and disposed in its turn to 
cut even that, he graciously consented 
to go to Canada. And there was grief 
in her bosom over parting with him, 
and joy in the hope of his being put in 
a straight course at last. 

“ God bless you, dear Tip. Don’t be 
too proud to come and see us, when you 
have made your fortune.” 

“ All right ! ” said Tip, and went. 

But not all the way to Canada ; in 
fact, not further than Liverpool. After 
making the voyage to that port from 
London, he found himself so strongly 
impelled to cut the vessel, that he re- 
solved to walk back again. Carrying 
out which intention, he presented him- 
self before her at the expiration of a 
month, in rags, without shoes, and much 
more tired than ever. 

At length, after another interval of 
successorship to Mrs. Bangham, he 
found a pursuit for himself, and an- 
nounced it. 

“ Amy, I have got a situation.” 

“ Have you really and truly, Tip ? ” 

“All right. I shall do now. You 
need n’t look anxious about me any 
more, old girl.” 

“What is it, Tip?” 

“ Why, you know Slingo by sight ? ” 

“ Not the man they call the deal- 
er ? ” 

“ That ’s the chap. He ’ll be out on 
Monday, and he ’s going to give me a 
berth.” 

“ What is he a dealer in, Tip ? ” 

“ Horses. All right ! I shall do 
now, Amy.” 

She lost sight of him for months after- 
wards, and only heard from him once. 
A whisper passed among the elder col- 


legians that he had been seen at a mock 
auction in Moorfields, pretending to 
buy plated articles for massive silver, 
and paying for them with the greatest 
liberality in bank-notes ; but it never 
reached her ears. One evening she 
was alone at work, — standing up at the 
window to save the twilight lingering 
above the wall, — when he opened the 
door and walked in. 

She kissed and welcomed him ; but 
was afraid to ask him any question. 
He saw how anxious and timid she 
was, and appeared sorry. 

“ I am afraid, Amy, you ’ll be vexed 
this time. Upon my life I am ! ” 

“ I am very sorry to hear you say so, 
Tip. Have you come back ? ” 

“Why, —yes.” 

“ Not expecting this time that what 
you had found would answer very well, 
I am less surprised and sorry than I 
might have been. Tip.” 

“ Ah ! But that ’s not the worst of 
it.” 

“ Not the worst of it? ” 

“Don’t look so startled. No, Amy, 
not the worst of it. I have come back, 
you see ; but — don't look so startled 
— I have come back in what I may call 
a new way. I am off the volunteer list 
altogether. I am in now, as one of the 
regulars.” 

“ O, don’t say you are a prisoner, 
Tip ! Don’t, don’t ! ” 

“Well, I don’t want to say it,” he 
returned in a reluctant tone ; “ but if 
you can’t understand me without my 
saying it, what am I to do? I am in 
for forty pound odd.” 

For the first time in all those years, 
she sunk under her cares. She cried, 
w'ith her clasped hands lifted above her 
head, that it w’ould kill their father if he 
ever knew it ; and fell down at Tip’s 
graceless feet. 

It was easier for Tip to bring her to 
her senses than for her to bring him to 
understand that the Father of the Mar- 
shalsea w T ould be beside himself if he 
knew the truth. The thing was incom- 
prehensible to Tip, and altogether a 
fanciful notion. He yielded to it in that 
light only, when he submitted to her 
entreaties, backed by those of his uncle 
and sister. There was no want of pre- 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


45 


cedent for his return ; it was accounted 
for to the father in the usual way ; and 
the collegians, with a better compre- 
hension of the pious fraud than Tip, 
supported it loyally. 

This was the life, and this the history, 
of the Child of the Marshalsea, at 
twenty-two. With a still surviving at- 
tachment to the one miserable yard and 
block of houses as her birthplace and 
home, she passed to and fro in it shrink- 
ingly now, with a womanly conscious- 
ness that she was pointed out to every 
one. Since she had begun to work be- 
yond the walls, she had found it neces- 
sary to conceal where she lived, and to 
come and go as secretly as she could, 
between the free city and the iron gates, 
outside of which she had never slept in 
her life. Her original timidity had 
grown with this concealment, and her 
light step and her little figure shunned 
the thronged streets while they passed 
along them. 

Worldly-wise in hard and poor neces- 
sities, she was innocent in all things 
else. Innocent in the mist through 
which she saw her father, and the pris- 
on, and the turbid living river that flowed 
through it and flowed on. 

This was the life, and this the his- 
tory, of Little Dorrit ; now going home 
upon a dull September evening, ob- 
served at a distance by Arthur Clen- 
nam. This was the life, and this the 
history, of Little Dorrit ; turning at the 
end of London Bridge, recrossing it, 
going back again, passing on to Saint 
George’s church, turning back suddenly 
once more, and flitting in at the open 
outer gate and little court-yard of the 
Marshalsea. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

THE LOCK. 

Arthur Clennam stood in the 
street, waiting to ask some passer-by 
what place that was. He suffered a 
few people to pass him in whose faces 
there was no encouragement to make 
the inquiry, and still stood pausing in 
the street, when an old man came up 
and turned into the court-yard. 


He stooped a good deal, and plodded 
along in a slow preoccupied manner, 
which made the bustling London 
thoroughfares no very safe resort for 
him. He was dirtily and meanly 
dressed, in a threadbare coat, once 
blue, reaching to his ankles and but- 
toned to his chin, where it vanished in 
the pale ghost of a velvet collar. A 
piece of red cloth with which that 
phantom had been stiffened in its life- 
time was now laid bare, and poked 
itself up, at the back of the old man’s 
neck, into a confusion of gray hair and 
rusty stock and buckle which all together 
nearly poked his hat off. A greasy hat 
it was, and a napless ; impending over 
his eyes, cracked and crumpled at the 
brim, and with a wisp of pocket-hand- 
kerchief dangling out below it. His 
trousers were so long and loose, and 
his shoes so clumsy and large, that he 
shuffled like an elephant ; though how 
much of this was gait, and how much 
trailing cloth and leather, no one could 
have told. Under one arm he carried 
a limp and worn-out case, containing 
some wind-instrument ; in the same 
hand he had a pennyworth of snuff in 
a little packet of whity-brown paper, 
from which he slowly comforted his 
poor old blue nose with a lengthened- 
out pinch, as Arthur Clennam looked 
at him. 

To this old man, crossing the court- 
yard, he preferred his inquiry, touching 
him on the shoulder. The old man 
stopped and looked round, with the 
expression in his weak gray eyes of one 
whose thoughts had been far off, and 
who was a little dull of hearing also. 

“Pray, sir,” said Arthur, repeating 
his question, “what is this place?” 

“ Ay ! This place ? ” returned the 
old man, staying his pinch of snuff on 
its road, and pointing at the place with- 
out looking at it. “This is the Mar- 
shalsea, sir.” 

“ The debtors’ prison ? ” 

“ Sir,” said the old man, with the air 
of deeming it not quite necessary to in- 
sist upon that designation, “ the debt- 
ors’ prison.” 

He turned himself about, and went 
on. 

“ I beg your pardon,” said Arthur, 


46 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


stopping him once more, “ but will you 
allow me to ask you another question ? 
Can any one go in here?” 

“Any one can go z«,” replied the old 
man ; plainly adding, by the significance 
of his emphasis, “ but it is not every 
one who can go out.” 

“ Pardon me once more. Are you 
familiar with the place ? ” 

“ Sir,” returned the old man, squeez- 
ing his little packet of snuff in his hand, 
and turning upon his interrogator as if 
such questions hurt him, “ I am.” 

“ I beg you to excuse me. I am not 
impertinently curious, but have a good 
object. Do you know the name of 
Dorrit here ! ” 

“ My name, sir,” replied the old 
man, most unexpectedly, “ is Dorrit.” 

Arthur pulled off his hat to him. 
“ Grant me the favor of half a dozen 
words. I was wholly unprepared for 
your announcement, and hope that as- 
surance is my sufficient apology for 
having taken the liberty of addressing 
you. I have recently come home to 
England after a long absence. I have 
seen at my mother’s — Mrs. Clennam 
in the city — a young woman working 
at her needle, whom I have only heard 
addressed or spoken of as Little Dorrit. 

I have felt sincerely interested in her, 
and have had a great desire to know 
something more about her. I saw her, 
not a minute before you came up, pass 
in at that door.” 

The old man looked at him atten- 
tively. “Are you a sailor, sir?” he 
asked. He seemed a little disappointed 
by the shake of the head that replied 
to him. “Not a sailor? I judged 
from your sunburnt face that you might 
be. Are you in earnest, sir? ” 

“ I do assure you that I am, and do 
entreat you to believe that I am in plain 
earnest.” 

“ I know very little of the world, sir,” 
returned the other, who had a weak 
and quavering voice. “I am merely 
passing on, like the shadow over the 
sundial. It would be worth no man’s 
while to mislead me ; it would really be 
too easy — too poor a success — to yield 
any satisfaction. The young woman 
whom you saw go in here is my broth- 
er’s child. My brother is William 


Dorrit ; I am Frederick. You say you 
have seen her at your mother’s (I know 
your mother befriends her), you have 
felt an interest in her, and you wish to 
know what she does here. Come and 
see.” 

He went on again, and Arthur ac- 
companied him. 

“My brother,” said the old man, 
pausing on the step, and slowly facing 
round again, “ has been here many 
years ; and much that happens even 
among ourselves, out of doors, is kept 
from him for reasons that I need n’t 
enter upon now. Be so good as to say 
nothing of my niece’s working at her 
needle. Be so good as to say nothing 
that goes beyond what is said among 
us. If you keep within our bounds, 
you cannot well be wrong. Now ! 
Come and see.” 

Arthur followed him down a narrow 
entry, at the end of which a key was 
turned, and a strong door was opened 
from within. It admitted them into a 
lodge or lobby, across which they passed, 
and so through another door and a grat- 
ing into the prison. The old man, al- 
ways plodding on before, turned round, 
in his slow, stiff, stooping manner, 
when they came to the turnkey on duty, 
as if to present his companion. The 
turnkey nodded ; and the companion 
passed in without being asked whom 
he wanted. 

The night was dark ; and the prison 
lamps in the yard, and the candles in 
the prison windows, faintly shining be- 
hind many sorts of wry old curtain and 
blind, had not the air of making it 
lighter. A few people loitered about, 
but the greater part of the population 
was within doors. The old man, tak- 
ing the right-hand side of the yard, 
turned in at the third or fourth doorway, 
and began to ascend the stairs. “ They 
are rather dark, sir, but you will not find 
anything in the way.” 

He paused for a moment before open- 
ing a door on the second story. He 
had no sooner turned the handle, than 
the visitor saw Dorrit, and saw the rea- 
son of her setting so much store by din- 
ing alone. 

She had brought the meat home that 
she should have eaten herself, and was 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


47 


already warming it on a gridiron over 
the fire for her father, clad in an old 
gray gown and a black cap, awaiting 
his supper at the table. A clean cloth 
was spread before him, with knife, fork, 
and spoon, salt-cellar, pepper-box, glass 
and pewter ale-pot. Such zests as his 
particular little phial of cayenne pepper, 
and his pennyworth of pickles in a sau- 
cer, were not wanting. 

She started, colored deeply, and 
turned white. The visitor, more with 
his eyes than by the slight impulsive 
motion of his hand, entreated her to be 
reassured and to trust him. 

“ I found this gentleman,” said the 
uncle — “ Mr. Clennam, William, son 
of Amy’s friend — at the outer gate, 
wishful, as he was going by, of paying 
his respects, but hesitating whether to 
come in or not. This is my brother 
William, sir.” 

“ I hope,” said Arthur, very doubtful 
what to say, “ that my respect for your 
daughter may explain and justify my 
desire to be presented to you, sir.” 

“Mr. Clennam,” returned the other, 
rising, taking his cap off in the flat of 
his hand, and so holding it, ready to 
put on again, “ you do me honor. You 
are welcome, sir.” With a low bow. 
“ Frederick, a chair. Pray sit down, 
Mr. Clennam.” 

He put his black cap on again as he 
had taken it off, and resumed his own 
seat. There was a wonderful air of 
benignity and patronage in his manner. 
These were the ceremonies with which 
he received the collegians. 

“ You are welcome to the Marshalsea, 
sir. I have welcomed many gentlemen 
to these walls. Perhaps you are aware 
— my daughter Amy may have men- 
tioned — that I am the F ather of this 
place.” 

“I — so I have understood,” said 
Arthur, dashing at the assertion. 

“You know, I dare say, that my 
daughter Amy was born here. A good 
girl, sir, a dear girl, and long a comfort 
and support to me. Amy, my dear, 
put the dish on ; Mr. Clennam will ex- 
cuse the primitive customs to which we 
are reduced here. Is it a compliment 
to ask you if you would do me the hon- 
or, sir, to — ” 


“ Thank you,” returned Arthur. 
“Not a morsel.” 

He felt himself quite lost in wonder 
at the manner of the man, and that the 
probability of his daughter’s having 
had a reserve as to her family history 
should be so far out of his mind. 

She filled his glass, put all the little 
matters on the table ready to his hand, 
and then sat beside him while he ate 
his supper. Evidently in observance 
of their nightly custom, she put some 
bread before herself, and touched his 
glass with her lips ; but Arthur saw she 
was troubled and took nothing. Her 
look at her father, half admiring him 
and proud of him, half ashamed for him, 
all devoted and loving, went to his in- 
most heart. 

The Father of the Marshalsea con- 
descended towards his brother as an 
amiable, well-meaning man ; a private 
character, who had not arrived at dis- 
tinction. “Frederick,” said he, “you 
and Fanny sup at your lodgings to- 
night, I know. What have you done 
with Fanny, Frederick?” 

“ She is walking with Tip.” 

“ Tip — as you may know — is my 
son, Mr. Clennam. He has been a 
little wild, and difficult to settle, but his 
introduction to the world was rather ” 

— he shrugged his shoulders with a 
faint sigh, and looked round the room 

— “a little adverse. Your first visit 
here, sir?” 

“ My first.” 

“You could hardly have been here 
since your boyhood without my knowl- 
edge. It very seldom happens that 
anybody — of any pretensions — any 
pretensions — comes here without being 
presented to me.” 

“ As many as forty or fifty in a day 
have been introduced to my brother,” 
said Frederick, faintly lighting up with 
a ray of pride. 

“ Yes ! ” the Father of the Mar- 
shalsea assented. “We have even ex- 
ceeded that number. On a fine Sun- 
day in term time, it is quite a Levee, — 
quite a Levee. Amy, my dear, I have 
been trying half the day to remember 
the name of the gentleman from Cam- 
berwell who was introduced to me last 
Christmas week by that agreeable coal- 


4 s 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


merchant who was remanded for six 
months.” 

“ I don’t remember his name, father.” 

“ Frederick, do you remember his 
name ? ” 

Frederick doubted if he had ever 
heard it. No one could doubt that 
Frederick was the last person upon 
earth to put such a question to, with 
any hope of information. 

“I mean,” said his brother, “the 
gentleman who did that handsome action 
with so much delicacy. Ha ! Tush ! 
The name has quite escaped me. Mr. 
Clennam, as I have happened to men- 
tion a handsome -Stnd delicate action, 
you may like, perhaps, to know what it 
was.” 

“ Very much,” said Arthur, with- 
drawing his eyes from the delicate head 
beginning to droop, and the pale face 
with a new solicitude stealing over it. 

“It is so generous, and shows so 
much fine feeling, that it is almost a 
duty to mention it. I said at the time 
that I always would mention it on every 
suitable occasion, without regard to 
personal sensitiveness. A — well — a — 
it’s of no use to disguise the fact — you 
must know, Mr. Clennam, that it does 
sometimes occur that people who come 
here desire to offer some little — Testi- 
monial — to the Father of the place.” 

To see her hand upon his arm in 
mute entreaty half repressed, and her 
timid little shrinking figure turning 
away, was to see a sad, sad sight. 

“ Sometimes,” he went on in a low, 
soft voice, agitated, and clearing his 
throat ever y now and then, — “sometimes 

— hem — it takes one shape and some- 
times another ; but it is generally — ha 

— Money. And it is, I cannot but con- 
fess it, it is too often — hem — accept- 
able. This gentleman that I refer to 
was presented to me, Mr. Clennam, in 
a manner highly gratifying to my feel- 
ings, and conversed not only with great 
politeness, but with great — ahem — 
information.” All this time, though he 
had finished his supper, he was ner- 
vously going about his plate with his 
knife and fork, as if some of it were 
still before him. “ It appeared from 
his conversation that he had a garden, 
though he was delicate of mentioning it 


at first, as gardens are — hem — are not 
accessible to me. . But it came out, 
through my admiring a very fine cluster 
of geranium — beautiful cluster of gera- 
nium to be sure — which he had brought 
from his conservatory. On my taking 
notice of its rich color, he showed me a 
piece of paper round it, on which w r as 
written ‘ For the Father of the Marshal- 
sea,’ and presented it to me. But this 
w r as — hem — not all. He made a par- 
ticular request, on taking leave, that I 
would remove the paper in half an hour. 
I — ha — I did so ; and I found that it 
contained — ahem — two guineas. I 
assure you, Mr. Clennam, I have re- 
ceived — hem — Testimonials in many 
ways, and of many degrees of value, 
and they have always been — ha — un- 
fortunately acceptable ; but I never was 
more pleased than with this — ahem — 
this particular Testimonial.” 

Arthur was in the act of saying the 
little he could say on such a theme, 
when a bell began to ring, and footsteps 
approached the door. A pretty girl of 
a far better figure, and much more de- 
veloped than Little Dorrit, though look- 
ing much younger in the face when the 
two were observed together, stopped in 
the doorway on seeing a stranger ; and 
a young man who was with her stopped 
too. 

“ Mr. Clennam, Fanny. My eldest 
daughter and my son, Mr. Clennam. 
The bell is a signal for visitors to retire, 
and so they have come to say good 
night ; but there is plenty of time, plenty 
of time. Girls, Mr. Clennam will ex- 
cuse any household business you may 
have together. He know’s, I dare say, 
that I have but one room here.” 

“ I only w'ant my clean dress from 
Amy, father,” said the second girl. 

“ And I my clothes,” said Tip. 

Amy opened a drawer in an old piece 
of furniture that was a chest of drawers 
above, and a bedstead below, and pro- 
duced twm little bundles, which she 
handed to her brother and sister. 
“Mended and made up?” Clennam 
heard the sister ask in a whisper. To 
which Amy answered, “ Yes.” He had 
risen now, and took the opportunity of 
glancing round the room. The bare 
walls had been colored green, evidently 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


49 


by an unskilled hand, and were poorly 
decorated with a few prints. The win- 
dow was curtained, and the floor car- 
peted ; and there were shelves, and pegs, 
and other such conveniences, that had 
accumulated in the course of years. It 
was a close, confined room, poorly fur- 
nished ; and the chimney smoked to 
boot, or tire tin screen at the top of the 
fireplace was superfluous ; but constant 
pains and care had made it neat, and 
even, after its kind, comfortable. 

All the while the bell was ringing, 
and the uncle was anxious to go. 
“Come, Fanny, come, Fanny,” he said 
with his ragged clarionet-case under his 
arm ; “ the lock, child, the lock ! ” 

Fanny bade her father good night, 
and whisked off airily. Tip had already 
clattered down stairs. “ Now, Mr. 
Clennam,” said the uncle, looking back 
as he shuffled out after them, “ the lock, 
sir, the lock.” 

Mr. Clennam had two things to do 
before he followed : one, to offer his 
testimonial to the Father of the Mar- 
shalsea, without giving pain to his child ; 
the other to say something to that child, 
though it were but a word, in explana- 
tion of his having come there. 

“Allow me,” said the Father, “to 
see you down stairs.” 

She had slipped out after the rest, 
and they were alone. “ Not on any 
account,” said the visitor, hurriedly. 
“Pray allow me to — ” chink, chink, 
chink. 

“ Mr. Clennam,” said the Father, “ I 
am deeply, deeply — ” But his visitor 
had shut up his hand to stop the chink- 
ing, and had gone down stairs with 
great speed. 

He saw no Little Dorrit on his way 
down, or in the yard. The last two or 
three stragglers were hurrying to the 
lodge, and he was following, when he 
caught sight of her in the doorway of 
the first house from the entrance. He 
turned back hastily. 

“Pray forgive me,” he said, “for 
speaking to you here ; pray forgive me 
for coming here at all! I followed you 
to-night. I did so, that I might endeav- 
or to render you and your family some 
service. You know the terms on which 
I and my mother are, and may not be 

4 


surprised that I have preserved our 
distant relations at her house, lest I 
should unintentionally make her jeal- 
ous, or resentful, or do you any injury 
in her estimation. What I have seen 
here, in this short time, has greatly 
increased my heartfelt wish to be a 
friend to you. It would recompense me 
for much disappointment if I could 
hope to gain your confidence.” 

She was scared at first, but seemed to 
take courage while he spoke to her. 

“ You are very good, sir. You speak 
very earnestly to me. But I — but I 
wish you had not watched me.” 

He understood tltjijemotion with which 
she said it to arise njjher father’s behalf ; 
and he respected it, and was silent. 

“ Mrs. Clennam has been of great 
service to me ; I don’t know what we 
should have done without the employ- 
ment she has given me ; I am afraid it 
may not be a good return to become 
secret with her ; I can say no more to- 
night, sir. I am sure you mean to be 
kind to us. Thank you, thank you.” 

“ Let me ask you one question before 
I leave. Have you known my mother 
long?” £ 

“ I think two years, rsir. — Thfe bell 
has stopped.” 

“ How did you know her first? Did 
she send here for you?” 

“ No. She does not even know that 
I live here. We have a friend, father 
and I, — a poor laboring man, but the 
best of friends, — and I wrote out that I 
wished to do needle-w'erk, and gave his 
address. And he got what I wrote out 
displayed at a few places where it cost 
nothing, and Mrs. Clennam found me 
that w’ay, and sent for me. The gate 
will be locked, sir ! ” 

She was so tremulous and agitated, 
and he was so moved by compassion 
for her, and by deep interest in her 
story as it dawned upon him, that he 
could scarcely tear himself away. But 
the stoppage of the bell, and the quiet 
in the prison, w ere a warning to depart ; 
and with a few' hurried words of kind- 
ness he left her gliding back to her 
father. 

But he had remained too late. The 
inner gate w-as locked, and the lodge 
closed. After a little fruitless knocking 


So 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


with his hand, he was standing there 
with the disagreeable conviction upon 
him that he had to get through the 
night, when a voice accosted him from 
behind. 

“Caught eh?” said the voice. 
“You won’t go home till morning. 
Oh! It’s you, is it, Mr. Clennam?” 

The voicerwas Tip’s : and they stood 
looking at one another in the prison- 
yard, as it began to rain. 

“You’ve done it,” observed Tip; 
“you must be sharper than that, next 
time.” 

“ But you are locked in too,” said 
Arthur. 

“ I believe I am4” said Tip, sarcas- 
tically. “ About ! But not in your 
way. I belong to the shop, only my 
sister has a theory that our governor 
must never know it. I don’t see why, 
myself.” 

“ Cafi I get any shelter?” asked 
Arthur. “ What had I better do ? ” 

“We had better get hold of Amy, 
first of all,” said Tip, referring any 
difficulty to her as a matter of course. 

“ I would rather walk about all night 
— it’s not much to do — than give that 
trouble.” 

“You needn’t do that, if you don’t 
mind paying for a bed. If you don’t 
mind paying, they ’ll make you up one 
on the Snuggery table, under the circum- 
stances. If you ’ll come along, I ’ll 
introduce you there.” 

As they passed down the yard, Arthur 
looked up at the window of the room 
he had lately left, where the light was 
still burning. “Yes, sir,” said Tip, 
following his glance. “ That ’s the 
governor’s. She ’ll sit with him for 
.another hour reading yesterday’s paper 
to him, or something of that sort; and 
then she ’ll come out like a little ghost, 
and vanish away without a sound.” 

“ I don’t understand you.” 

“ The governor sleeps up in the 
room, and she has a lodging at the 
turnkey’s. First house there,” said 
Tip, pointing out the doorway into 
which she had retired. ‘‘First house, 
sky parlor. She pays twice as much 
for it. as she would for one twice as good 
outside. But she stands by the gov- 
ernor, poor dear girl, day and night.” 


This brought them to the tavern 
establishment at the upper end of the 
prison, where the collegians had just 
vacated their social evening club. The 
apartment on the ground-floor in which 
it was held was the Snuggery in ques- 
tion ; the presidential tribune of the 
chairman, the pewter-pots, glasses, 
pipes, tobacco ashes, and general flavor 
of members, were still as that convivial 
institution had left them on its adjourn- 
ment. The Snuggery had two of the 
qualities popularly held to be essential 
to grog for ladies, in respect that it was 
hot and strong ; but in the third point 
of analogy, requiring plenty of it, the 
Snuggery was defective, being but a 
cooped-up apartment. 

The unaccustomed visitor from out- 
side naturally assumed everybody here 
to be prisoners, — landlord, waiter, bar- 
maid, potboy, and all. Whether they 
were or not did not appear ; but they 
all had a weedy look. The keeper of a 
chandler’s shop in a front parlor, who 
took in gentlemen boarders, lent his 
assistance in making the bed. He had 
been a tailor in his time, and had kept 
a phaeton, he said. He boasted that 
he stood up litigiously for the interests 
of the college ; and he had undefined 
and undefinable ideas that the marshal 
intercepted a “Fund,” which ought to 
come to the collegians. He liked to 
believe this, and always impressed the 
shadowy grievance on new-comers and 
strangers ; though he could not, for his 
life, have explained what Fund he 
meant, or how the notion had got 
rooted in his soul. He had fully con- 
vinced himself, notwithstanding, that 
his own proper share of the Fund w'as 
three and ninepence a week ; and that 
in this amount he, as an individual col- 
legian, w'as swindled by the marshal 
regularly every Monday. Apparently, 
he helped to make the bed that he 
might not lose an opportunity of stat- 
ing this case ; after which unloading of 
his mind, and after announcing (as it 
seemed he always did, without any- 
thing coming of it), that he was going 
to write a letter to the papers and show 
the marshal up, he fell into miscella- 
neous conversation with the rest. It 
was evident from the general tone of 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


the whole party, that they had come to 
regard insolvency as the normal state of 
mankind, and the payment of debts as 
a disease that occasionally broke out. 

In this strange scene, and with these 
strange spectres flitting about him, Ar- 
thur Clennam looked on at the prepara- 
tions, as.if they were part of a dream. 
Pending which, the long-initiated Tip, 
with an awful enjoyment of the Snug- 
gery’s resources, pointed out the com- 
mon kitchen fire 'maintained by sub- 
scription of collegians, the boiler for 
hot water supported in like manner, 
and other premises generally tending 
to the deduction that the way to be 
healthy, wealthy, and wise was to 
come to the Marshalsea. 

The two tables, put together in a cor- 
ner, w'ere at length converted into a 
very fair bed ; and the stranger was left 
to the Windsor chairs, the presidential 
tribune, the beery atmosphere, sawdust, 
pipe-lights, spittoons, and repose. But 
the last item was long, long, long in 
linking itself to the rest. The novelty 
of the place, the coming upon it w'ithout 
preparation, the sense of being locked 
up, the remembrance of that room up 
stairs, of the two brothers, and above 
all of the retiring childish form and the 
face in which he now saw' years of in- 
sufficient food, if not of want, kept him 
waking and unhappy. 

Speculations, too, bearing the stran- 
gest relations towards the prison, but 
always concerning the prison, ran like 
nightmares through his mind while he 
lay awake. Whether coffins were kept 
ready for people who might die there, 
where they were kept, how r they were 
kept, where people who died in the 
prison were buried, how they w'ere taken 
out, what forms were observed, whether 
an implacable creditor could arrest the 
dead ? As to escaping, what chances 
there were of escape? Whether a 
prisoner could scale the walls with a 
cord and grapple, how he would de- 
scend upon the other side ; w'hether he 
could alight on a housetop, steal down 
a staircase, let himself out at a door, 
and get lost in the crowd ? As to Fire 
in the prison, if one were to break out 
while he lay there ? 

And these involuntary starts of fancy 


5 * 

were, after all, but the setting of a 
picture in which three people kept be- 
fore him. His father, with the stead- 
fast look with which he had died, pro- 
phetically darkened forth in the por- 
trait ; his mother, with her arm up, 
warding off his suspicion ; Little Dor- 
rit, with her hand on the degraded arm, 
and her drooping head turned away. 

What if his mother had an old reason 
she well knew for softening to this poor 
girl ! What if the prisoner now sleep- 
ing quietly — Heaven grant it — by the 
light of the great Day of Judgment 
should trace back his fall to her ! What 
if any act of hers, and of his father’s, 
should have even remotely brought the 
gray heads of those two brothers so 
low ! 

A swift thought shot into his mind. 
In that long imprisonment here, and in 
her own long confinement to her room, 
did his mother find a balance to be 
struck ? I admit that I was accessory 
to that man’s captivity. I have suffered 
for it in kind. He has decayed in his 
prison ; I in mine. I have paid the 
penalty. 

When all the other thoughts had 
faded out, this one held possession of 
him. When he fell asleep, she came 
before him in her wheeled chair, ward- 
ing him off with this justification. 
When he awoke, and sprang up cause- 
lessly frightened, the words were in his 
ears, as if her voice had slowly spoken 
them at his pillow to break his rest ; 
“ He withers away in his prison ; I 
wither away in mine ; inexorable justice 
is done ; what do I owe on this score !” 


CHAPTER IX. 

LITTLE MOTHER. 

The morning light w'as in no hurry to 
climb the prison wall and look in at the 
Snuggery windows ; and when it did 
come, it would have been more wel- 
come if it had come alone, instead of 
bringing a rush of rain with it. But the 
equinoctial gales were blowing out at 
sea, and the impartial southwest wind, 
in its flight, would not neglect even the 


52 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


narrow Marshalsea. While it roared 
through the steeple of Saint George’s 
church, and twirled all the cowls in the 
neighborhood, it made a swoop to beat 
the Southwark smoke into the jail ; 
and, plunging down the chimneys of 
the few early collegians who were yet 
lighting their fires, half suffocated 
them. 

Arthur Clennam would have been 
little disposed to linger in bed, though 
his bed had been in a more private sit- 
uation, and less affected by the raking 
out of yesterday’s fire, the kindling of 
to-day's under the collegiate boiler, 
the filling of that Spartan vessel at the 
pump, the sweeping and sawdusting 
of the common room, and other such 
preparations. Heartily glad to see the 
morning, though little rested by the 
night, he turned out as soon as he could 
distinguish objects about him, and paced 
the yard for two heavy hours before the 
gate was opened. 

The walls were so near to one another, 
and the wild clouds hurried over them 
so fast, that it gave him a sensation like 
the beginning of sea-sickness to look 
up at the gusty sky. The rain, carried 
aslant by flaws of wind, blackened that 
side of the central building which he 
had visited last night, but left a narrow 
dry trough under the lee of the will, 
where he walked up and down among 
waifs of straw and dust and paper, the 
waste droppings of the pump, and the 
stray leaves of yesterday’s greens. It 
was as haggard a view of life as a man 
need look upon. 

Nor was it relieved by any glimpse of 
the little creature who had brought him 
there. Perhaps she glided out of her 
doorway and in at that where her father 
lived, while his face was turned from 
both; but he saw nothing of her. It 
was too early for her brother ; to have 
seen him once, was to have seen enough 
of him to know that he would be slug- 
gish to leave whatever frowzy bed he 
occupied at night ; so, as Arthur Clen- 
nam walked up and down, waiting for 
the gate to open, he cast about in his 
mind for future, rather than for present 
means of pursuing his discoveries. 

At last the lodge-gate turned, and the 
turnkey, standing on the step, taking 


an early comb at his hair, was ready to 
let him out. With a joyful sense of re- 
lease he passed through the lodge, and 
found himself again in the little outer 
court-yard where he had spoken to the 
brother last night. 

There was a string of people already 
straggling in, whom it was not difficult 
to identify as the nondescript messen- 
gers, go-betweens, and errand-bearers 
of the place. Some of them had been 
lounging in the rain until the gate 
should open ; others, who had timed 
their arrival with greater nicety, were 
coming up now, and passing in with 
damp whity-brown paper bags from 
the grocers, loaves of bread, lumps of 
butter, eggs, milk, and the like. The 
shabbiness of these attendants upon 
shabbiness, the poverty of these insol- 
vent waiters upon insolvency, was a 
sight to see. Such threadbare coats 
and trousers, such fusty gowns and 
shawls, such squashed hats and bon- 
nets, such boots and shoes, such um- 
brellas and walking-sticks, never were 
seen in Rag Fair. All of them wore 
the cast-off clothes of other men and 
women ; were made up of patches and 
pieces of other people’s individuality, 
and had no sartorial existence of their 
own proper. Their walk was the walk 
of a race apart. They had a peculiar 
way of doggedly slinking round the cor- 
ner, as if they were eternally going to 
the pawnbroker’s. When they coughed, 
they coughed like people accustomed 
to be forgotten on doorsteps and in 
draughty passages, waiting for answers 
to letters in faded ink, which gave the 
recipients of those manuscripts great 
mental disturbance, and no satisfaction. 
As they eyed the stranger in passing, 
they eyed him with borrowing eyes, — 
hungry, sharp, speculative as to his 
softness if they were accredited to him, 
and the likelihood of his standing some- 
thing handsome. Mendicity on com- 
mission stooped in their high shoulders, 
shambled in their unsteady legs, but- 
toned and pinned and darned and 
dragged their clothes, frayed their but- 
ton-holes, leaked out of their figures in 
dirty little ends of tape, and issued from 
thejr mouths in alcoholic breathings. 

As these people passed him stand- 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


S3 


ing still in the court-yard, and one of 
them turned back to inquire if he could 
assist him with his services, it came into 
Arthur Clennam’s mind that he w r ould 
speak to Dorrit again before he went 
away. She would have recovered her 
first surprise, and might feel easier with 
him. He asked this member of the 
fraternity (who had two red herrings in 
his hand, and a loaf and a blacking- 
brush under his arm), where was the 
nearest place to get a cup of coffee at. 
The nondescript replied in encourag- 
ing terms, and brought him to a coffee- 
shop in the street within a stone’s 
throw. 

“ Do you know Miss Dorrit ? ” asked 
the new client. 

The nondescript knew two Miss Dor- 
rits ; one who was born inside — That 
was the one ! That was the one? The 
nondescript had known her many years. 
In regard of the other Miss Dorrit, the 
nondescript lodged in the same house 
with herself and uncle. 

This changed the client’s half-formed 
design of remaining at the coffee- 
shop until the nondescript should bring 
him word that Dorrit had issued forth 
into the street. He intrusted the non- 
descript with a confidential message to 
her, importing that the visitor w'ho had 
waited on her father last night begged 
the favor of a few words with her at her 
uncle’s lodging ; he obtained from the 
same source full directions to the house, 
which w'as very near ; dismissed the 
nondescript gratified w'ith half a crown ; 
and, having hastily refreshed himself at 
the coffee-shop, repaired with all speed 
to the clarionet-player’s dwelling. 

There were so many lodgers in this 
house, that the door-post seemed to be 
as full of bell-handles as a cathedral or- 
gan is of stops. Doubtful which might 
be the clarionet-stop, he was consider- 
ing the point, w'hen a shuttlecock flew 
out of the parlor window, and alighted 
on his hat. He then observed that in 
the parlor window' w r as a blind with the 
inscription, Mr. Cripples’s Academy ; 
also, in another line, Evening Tuition; 
and behind the blind was a little w'hite- 
faced boy, with a slice of bread and 
butter, and a battledore. The window 
being accessible from the footway, he 


looked in over the blind, returned the 
shuttlecock, and put his question. 

“ Dorrit? ” said the little white-faced 
boy (Master Cripples in fact). “Mr. 
Dorrit ? Third bell and one knock.” 

The pupils of Mr. Cripples appeared 
to have been making a copy-book of the 
street door, it was so- extensively scrib- 
bled over in pencil. The frequency of 
the inscriptions, “ Old Dorrit,” and 
“ Dirty Dick,” in combination, sug- 
gested intentions of personality on the 
part of Mr. Cripples’s pupils. There 
w'as ample time to make these obser- 
vations before the door was opened by 
the poor old man himself. 

“ Ha ! ” said he, very slowly remem- 
bering Arthur, “ you were shut in last 
night ? ” 

“Yes, Mr. Dorrit. I hope to meet 
your niece here presently.” 

“ Oh ! ” said he, pondering. “ Out 
of my brother’s way? True. Would 
you come up stairs and W'ait for her ? ” 

“Thank you.” 

Turning himself, as slowly as he 
turned in his mind whatever he heard 
or said, he led the way up the narrow 
stairs. The house was very close, and 
had an unwholesome smell. The lit- 
tle staircase windows looked in at the 
back windows of other houses as un- 
wholesome as itself, with poles and 
lines thrust out of them, on which un- 
sightly linen hung: as if the inhabitants 
w'ere angling for clothes, and had had 
some wretched bites not worth attend- 
ing to. In the back garret — a sickly- 
room, with a turn-up bedstead in it, so 
hastily and recently turned up that the 
blankets were boiling over, as it were, 
and keeping the lid open — a half-fin- 
ished breakfast of coffee and toast for 
tw'o persons w'as jumbled down any- 
how on a rickety table. 

There was no one there. The old 
man, mumbling to himself, after some 
consideration, that Fanny had run away, 
went to the next room to fetch her 
back. The visitor, observing that she 
held the door on the inside, and that, 
when the uncle tried to open it, there 
was a sharp adjuration of, “ Don’t, stu- 
pid ! ” and an appearance of loose stock- 
ing and flannel, concluded that the 
young lady was in an undress. The 


54 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


uncle, without appearing to come to any 
conclusion, shuffled in again, sat down 
in his chair, and began warming his 
hands at the fire. Not that it was cold, 
or that he had any waking idea whether 
it was or not. 

“ What did you think of my brother, 
sir? ” he asked, when he, by and by, 
discovered what he was doing, left off, 
reached over to the chimney-piece, and 
took his clarionet-case down. 

“ I was glad,” said Arthur, very much 
at a loss, for his thoughts were on the 
brother before him, “to find him so 
well and cheerful.” 

“ Ha ! ” muttered the old man, “ yes, 
yes, yes, yes, yes ! ” 

Arthur wondered what he could pos- 
sibly want with the clarionet-case. He 
did not want it at all. He discovered, 
in due time, that it was not the little 
paper of snuff (which was also on the 
chimney-piece), put it back again, 
took down the snuff instead, and sol- 
aced himself with a pinch. He was as 
feeble, spare, and slow in his pinches 
as in everything else, but a certain little 
trickling of enjoyment of them played 
in the poor worn nerves about the cor- 
ners of his eyes and mouth. 

“ Amy, Mr. Clennam. What do you 
think of her ? ” 

“ I am much impressed, Mr. Dorrit, 
by all that I have seen of her and 
thought of her.” 

“ My brother would have been quite 
lost without Amy,” he returned. “ We 
should all have been lost without Amy. 
She is a very good girl, Amy. She 
does her duty.” 

Arthur fancied that he heard in these 
praises a certain tone of custom which 
he had heard from the father last night, 
with an inward protest and feeling of 
antagonism. It was not that they stinted 
her praises, or were insensible to what 
she did for them ; but that they were lazi- 
ly habituated to«l*er, as they were to all 
the rest of their condition. He fancied 
that, although they.had before them, 
every day, the means of comparison 
between her and One another and them- 
selves, they regarded her as being in 
her necessary place ; as holding a posi- 
tion towards them all which belonged 
to her, like her name or her age. He 


fancied that they viewed her, not as 
having risen away from the prison at- 
mosphere, but as appertaining to it ; 
as being vaguely what they had a right 
to expect, and nothing more. 

Her uncle resumed his breakfast, and 
was munching toast sopped in coffee, 
oblivious of his guest, when the third 
bell rang. That was Amy, he said, 
and went down to let her in ; leaving 
the visitor with as vivid a picture on 
his mind of his begrimed hands, dirt- 
worn face, and decayed figure, as if he 
were still drooping in his chair. 

She came up after him, in the usual 
plain dress, and with the usual timid 
manner. Her lips were a little parted, 
as if her heart beat faster than usual. 

“Mr. Clennam, Amy,” said her un- 
cle, “ has been expecting you some 
time.” 

“ I took the liberty of sending you a 
message.” 

“ I received the message, sir.” 

“ Are you going to my mother’s this 
morning? I think not, for it is past 
your usual hour.”. 

“ Not to-day, sir. I am not wanted 
to-day.” 

“ Will you allow me to walk a little 
way in whatever direction you may be 
going ? I can then speak to you as we 

walk, both without detaining you here, 
and without intruding longer here my- 
self.”. 

She looked embarrassed, but said, if he 
pleased. He made a pretence of having 
mislaid his walking-stick, to give her 
time to set the bedstead right, to an- 
swer her sister’s impatient knock at the 

wall, and to say a word softly to her 
uncle. Then he found it, and they 
went down stairs ; she first, he follow- 
ing, the. uncle standing at the stair- 
head, and probably forgetting them 
before they had reached the ground- 
floor. 

Mr. Cripples’s pupils, who were by 
this time coming to school, desisted 
from their morning recreation of cuffing 
one another with bags and books, to 
stare with all the eyes they had at a 
stranger who had been to see Dirty 
Dick. They bore the trying' spectacle 
in silence, until the mysterious visitor 
was at a safe distance ; when they 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


55 


burst into pebbles and yells, and like- 
wise into reviling dances, and in all re- 
spects buried the pipe of peace with so 
many savage ceremonies, that if Mr. 
Cripples had been the chief of the Crip- 
plewayboo tribe, with his war-paint on, 
they could scarcely have done greater 
justice to their education. 

In the midst of this homage, Mr. 
Arthur Clennam offered his arm to Lit- 
tle Dorrit, and Little Dorrit took it. 
“ Will you go by the Iron Bridge,” said 
he, “ where there is an escape from the 
noise of the street ? ” Little Dorrit 
answered, if he pleased, and presently 
ventured to hope that he would “ not 
mind ” Mr. Cripples’s boys, for she had 
herself received her education, such as 
it was, in Mr. Cripples’s evening acad- 
emy. He returned, with the best will 
in the world, that Mr. Cripples’s boys 
were forgiven out of the bottom of his 
soul. Thus did Cripples unconsciously 
become a master of the ceremonies be- 
tween them, and bring them more natu- 
rally together than Beau Nash might 
have done if they had lived in his golden 
days, and he had alighted from his coach 
and six for the purpose. 

The morning remained squally, and 
the streets were miserably muddy, but 
no rain fell as they walked towards 
the Iron Bridge. The little creature 
seemed so young in his eyes, that there 
were moments when he found himself 
thinking of her, if not speaking to her, 
as if she were a child. Perhaps he 
seemed as old in her eyes as she seemed 
young in his. 

“ I am sorry to hear you were so in- 
convenienced last night, sir, as to be 
locked in. It was very unfortunate.” 

It was nothing, he returned. He had 
had a very good bed. 

“ O yes ! ” she said quickly ; “ she 
believed there were excellent beds at 
the coffee-house.” He noticed that 
the coffee-house was quite a majestic 
hotel to her, and that she treasured its 
reputation. 

“ I believe it is very expensive,” said 
Little Dorrit; “ but -my father has told 
me that quite beautiful dinners may be 
got there. And wine,” she added, tim- 
idly. 

“ Were you ever there ? ” 


“ O no ! Only into the kitchen, to 
fetch hot water.” 

To think of growing up with a kind 
of awe upon one as to the luxuries of 
that superb establishment, the Mar- 
shalsea hotel ! 

“ I asked you last night,” said Clen- 
nam, “how you had become acquainted 
with my mother. Did you ever hear 
her name before she sent for you ? ” 

“ No, sir.” 

“ Do you think your father ever 
did ? ” 

“ No, sir.” 

He met her eyes raised to his with so 
much wonder in them (she was scared 
when that encounter took place, and 
shrunk away again) that he felt it ne- 
cessary to say, — 

“ I have a reason for asking which I 
cannot very well explain ; but you must 
on no account suppose it to be of a na- 
ture to cause you the least alarm or 
anxiety. Quite the reverse. And you 
think that at no time of your father’s 
life was my name of Clennam ever fa- 
miliar to him ? ” 

“ No, sir.” 

He felt, from the tone in which she 
spoke, that she was glancing up at' him 
with those parted lips. Therefore he 
looked before him rather than make 
her heart beat quicker still by embar- 
rassing her afresh. 

Thus they emerged upon the Iron 
Bridge, which was as quiet after the 
roaring streets as though it had been 
open country. The wind blew rough- 
ly, the wet squalls came rattling past 
them, skimming the pools on the 
road and pavement, and raining them 
down into the river. The clouds raced 
on furiously in the lead- colored sky, the 
smoke and mist raced after them, the 
dark tide ran fierce and strong in the 
same direction. Little Dorrit seemed 
the least, the quietest, and weakest of 
Heaven’s creatures. 

“ Let me put you in a coach,” said 
Arthur Clennam, very nearly adding, 
“ my poor child.” 

She hurriedly declined, saying that 
wet or dry made little difference to her; 
she was used to go about in all weath- 
ers. He knew it to be so, and was 
touched with more pity ; thinking of 


56 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


the slight figure at his side making its 
nightly way through the damp, dark, 
boisterous streets to such a place of 
rest. 

“ You spoke so feelingly to me last 
night, sir, and I found afterwards that 
you had been so generous to my father, 
that I could not resist your message, 
if it was only to thank you; especially 
as I wished very much to say to you — ” 
she hesitated and trembled, and tears 
rose in her eyes, but did not fall. 

“ To say to me — ? ” 

“ That I hope you will not misunder- 
stand my father. Don’t judge him, sir, 
as you would judge others outside the 
gates. He has been there so long ! I 
never saw him outside, but I can under- 
stand that he must have grown different 
in some things since.” 

“ My thoughts will never be unjust 
or harsh towards him, believe me.” 

“Not,” she said, with a prouder air, 
as the misgiving evidently crept upon 
her that she might seem to be abandon- 
ing him, — “not that he has anything 
to be ashamed of for himself, or that I 
have anything to be ashamed of for him. 
He only requires to be understood. I 
only ask for him that his life may be 
fairly remembered. All that he said 
was quite true. It all happened just 
as he related it. He is very much re- 
spected. Everybody who comes in is 
glad to know him. He is more courted 
than any one else. He is far more 
thought of than the.Marshal is.” . 

If ever pride were innocent, it was 
innocent in Little Dorrit when she 
grew boastful of her father. 

“It is often said that his manners 
are a true gentleman’s, and quite a 
study. I see none like them in that 
place, but he is admitted to be superior 
to all the rest. This is quite as much 
why they make him presents, as because 
they know him to be needy. He is 
not to be blamed for being in need, 
poor love. Who could be in prison a 
quarter of a century, and be prosper- 
ous ! ” 

What affection in her words, what 
compassion in her repressed tears, what 
a great soul of fidelity within her, how 
true the light that shed false brightness 
round him 1 


“ If I have found it best to conceal 
where my home is, it is not because I 
am ashamed of him. God forbid I 
Nor am I so much ashamed of the 
place itself as might be supposed. Peo- 
ple are not bad because they come 
there. I have known numbers of good, 
persevering, honest people come there 
through misfortune. They are almost 
all kind-hearted to one another. And 
it would be ungrateful indeed in me 
to forget that I have had many quiet, 
comfortable hours there ; that I had an 
excellent friend there, when I was quite 
a baby, who was very fond of me ; that 
I have been taught there, and have 
worked there, and have slept soundly 
there. I think it would be almost 
cowardly and cruel not to have some 
little attachment for it, after all this.” 

She had relieved the faithful fulness 
of her heart, and modestly said, raising 
her eyes appealingly to her new friend’s, 
“ I did not mean to say so much, nor 
have I ever but once spoken about this 
before. But it seems to set it more 
right than it was last night. I said I 
wished you had not followed me, sir. 
I don’t wish it so much now, unless you 
should think — indeed 1 don’t wish it 
at all, unless I should have spoken so 
confusedly, that — that you can scarcely 
understand me, which I am afraid may 
be the case.” 

He told her with perfect truth that it 
was not the case; and, putting himself 
between her and the sharp wind and 
rain, sheltered her as well as he could. 

“ I feel permitted now,” he said, “to 
ask you a little more concerning your 
father. Has he many creditors ? ” 

“ O, a great number.” 

“ I mean detaining creditors, who 
keep him where he is? ” 

“ O yes ! a great number.” 

“ Can you tell me — I can get the in- 
formation, no doubt, elsewhere, if you 
cannot — who i^the most influential of 
them ? ” 

Dorrit said, after considering a little, 
that she used to hear long ago of Mr. 
Tite Barnacle as a. man of great power. 
He was a commissioner, or a board, or 
a trustee, “or something.” He lived 
in Grosvenor Square, she thought, or 
very near it. He was under Govern- 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


57 


ment, — high in the Circumlocution Of- 
fice. She appeared to have acquired, 
in her infancy, some awful impression 
of the might of this formidable Mr. Tite 
Barnacle of Grosvenor Square, or very 
near it, and the Circumlocution Office, 
which quite crushed her when she men- 
tioned him. 

“It can do no harm,” thought Ar- 
thur, “if I see this Mr. Tite Barnacle.” 

The thought did not present itself so 
quietly but that her quickness inter- 
cepted it. “Ah ! ” said Little Dorrit, 
shaking her head with the mild despair 
of a lifetime. “ Many people used to 
.think once of getting my poor father 
out, but you don't know how hopeless 
it is.” 

She forgot to be shy at the moment, 
in honestly warning him away from the 
sunken wreck he had a dream of raising ; 
and looked at him with eyes which as- 
suredly, in association with her patient 
face, her fragile figure, her spare dress, 
and the wind and rain, did not turn him 
from his purpose of helping her. 

“ Even if it could be done,” said she, 
— “ and it never can be done now, — 
where could father live, or how could 
he live ? I have often thought that if 
such a change could come, it might be 
anything but a service to him now. 
People might not think so well of him 
outside as they do there. He might 
not be so gently dealt with outside as he 
is there. He might not be so fit him- 
self for the life outside as he is for that. 

Here for the first time she could not 
restrain her tears from falling ; and the 
little thin hands he had watched when 
they were so busy trembled as they 
clasped each other. 

“ It would be a new distress to him 
even to know that I earn a little money, 
and that Fanny earns a little money. 
"He is so anxious about us, you see, 
feeling helplessly shut up there. Such 
a good, good father ! ” 

He let the little burst of feeling go by 
before he spoke. It w r as soon gone. 
She was not accustomed to think of 
herself, or to trouble any one with her 
emotions. He had but glanced away 
at the piles of city roofs and chimneys 
among w'hich the smoke was rolling 
heavily, and at the wilderness of masts 


on the river, and the wilderness of 
steeples on the shore, indistinctly mixed 
together in the stormy haze, w hen she 
was again as quiet as if she had been 
plying her needle in his mother’s room. 

“You would be glad to have your 
brother set at liberty?” 

“ O, very, very glad, sir ! ” 

“ Well, we will hope for him at least. 
You told me last night of a friend you 
had ? » 

His name was Plomish, Little Dorrit 
said. 

And where did Plomish live ? Plor- 
nish lived in Bleeding Heart Yard. 
He was “ only a plasterer,” Little Dor- 
rit said, as a caution to him not to form 
high social expectations of Plomish. 
He lived at the last house in Bleeding 
Heart Yard, and his name w'as over a 
little gateway. 

Arthur took down the address, and 
gave her his. He had now done all he 
sought to do for the present, except that 
he wished to leave her with a reliance 
upon him, and to have something like 
a promise from her that she would 
cherish it. 

“There is one friend !” he said, put- 
ting up his pocket-book. “ As I take 
you back — you are going back?” 

“ O yes ! going straight home.” 

“As I take you back,” the wrnrd 
home jarred upon him, “ let me ask you 
to persuade yourself that you have 
another friend. I make no professions, 
and say no more.” 

“You are truly kind to me, sir. I 
am sure I need no more.” 

They walked back through the mis- 
erable muddy streets, and among the 
poor, mean shops, and w'ere jostled by 
the crowds of dirty hucksters usual to a 
poor neighborhood. There was noth- 
ing, by the short w-ay, that was pleasant 
to any of the five senses. Yet it was 
not a common passage, through com- 
mon rain and mire and noise, to Clen- 
nam, having this little, slender, careful 
creature on his arm. How young she 
seemed to him, or how 7 old he to her, 
or what a secret either to the other, in 
that beginning of the destined inter- 
weaving of their stories, matters not 
here. He thought of her having been 
born and bred among these scenes, and 


5S 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


shrinking through them now, familiar 
yet misplaced ; he thought of her long 
acquaintance with the squalid needs of 
life, and of her innocence ; of her old 
solicitude for others, and her few years, 
and her childish aspect. 

They were come into the High 
Street, where the prison stood, when 
a voice cried, “ Little mother, little 
mother ! ” Dorrit stopping and look- 
ing back, an excited figure of a strange 
kind bounced against them (still crying 
“ Little mother” ), fell down, and scat- 
tered the contents of a large basket, 
filled with potatoes, in the mud. 

“O Maggy,” said Dorrit, “what a 
clumsy child you are ! ” 

Maggy was not hurt, but picked 
herself up immediately, and then began 
to pick up the potatoes, in which both 
Dorrit and Arthur Clennam helped. 
Maggy picked up very few potatoes, 
and a great quantity of mud ; but they 
were all recovered, and deposited in 
the basket. Maggy then smeared her 
muddy face with, her shawl, and pre- 
senting it to Mr. Clennam as a type of 
purity, enabled him to see what she 
was like. 

She was about eight-and-twenty, with 
large bones, large features, large feet 
and hands, large eyes, and no hair. 
Her large eyes were limpid and almost 
colorless ; they seemed to be very 
little affected by light, and to stand 
unnaturally still. There was also that 
attentive, listening expression in her 
face which is seen in the faces of the 
blind ; but she was not blind, having 
one tolerably serviceable eye. Her 
face was not exceedingly ugly, though 
it was only redeemed from being so 
by a smile, — a good-humored smile, and 

lea.sant in itself, but rendered pitiable 

y being constantly there. A great 
white cap, with a quantity of opaque 
frilling that was always flapping about, 
apologized for Maggy’s baldness, and 
made it so very difficult for her old 
black bonnet to retain its place upon 
her head, that it held on round her 
neck like a gypsy’s baby. A commis- 
sion of Haberdashers could alone have 
reported what the rest of laer poor dress 
was made of ; but it had a strong gen- 
eral resemblance to sea-weed, with 


here and there a gigantic tea-leaf. Her 
shawl looked particularly like a tea- 
leaf, after long infusion. 

Arthur Clennam looked at Dorrit, 
with the expression of one saying, 
“May I ask who this is?” Dorrit, 
whose hand this Maggy, still calling 
her little mother, had begun to fondle, 
answered in words. (They were under 
a gateway into which the majority of 
the potatoes had rolled.) 

“ This is Maggy, sir.” 

“ Maggy, sir,” echoed the personage 
presented. “ Little mother ! ” 

“She is the granddaughter — ’’said 
Dorrit. 

“ Granddaughter,” echoed Maggy. 

“ — Of my old nurse, who has been 
dead a long time. Maggy, how old are 
you ? ” 

“Ten, mother,” said Maggy. 

“ You can’t think how good she is, 
sir,” said Dorrit, with infinite tender- 
ness. 

“ Good she is,” echoed Maggy, trans- 
ferring the pronoun in a most expres- 
sive way from herself to her little 
mother. 

“ Or how clever,” said Dorrit. “ She 
goes on errands as well as any one.” 
Maggy laughed. “ And is as trust- 
worthy as the Bank of England.” Mag- 
gy laughed. “ She earns her own 
living entirely. Entirely, sir ! ” said 
Dorrit, in a lower and triumphant tone. 
“Really does!” 

“ What is her history ? ” asked Clen- 
nam. 

“Think of that, Maggy!” said 
Dorrit, taking her two large hands and 
clapping them together. “ A gentle- 
man from thousands of miles away 
wanting to know your history ! ” 

“ My history ? ” cried Maggy. “ Lit- 
tle mother.” 

“ She means me,” said Dorrit, rather 
confused; “she is very much attached 
to me. Her old grandmother was not 
so kind to her as she should have been ; 
was she, Maggy? ” 

Maggy shook her head, made a 
drinking- vessel of her clenched left 
hand, drank out of it, and said, “ Gin.” 
Then beat an imaginary child, and 
said, “ Broom-handles and pokers.” 

“ When Maggy was ten years old,” 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


59 


said Dorrit, watching her face while 
she spoke, “she had a bad fever, sir, 
and she has never grown any older 
ever since.” 

“Ten years old,” said Maggy, nod- 
ding her head. “ But what a nice 
hospital ! So comfortable, wasn’t it? 
O so nice it was. Such a Ev’nly 
place ! ” 

“ She had never been at peace before, 
sir,” said Dorrit, turning towards Ar- 
thur for an instant and speaking low, 
“and she always runs off upon that.” 

“ Such beds there is there ! ” cried 
Maggy. “Such lemonades ! Such 
oranges ! Such d’licious broth and 
wine ! Such Chicking ! O, ain’t it 
a delightful place to go and stop at ! ” 
“ So M aggy stopped there as long as 
she could,” said Dorrit, in her former 
tone of telling a child’s story, — the 
tone designed for Maggy’s ear, — “and 
at last, when she could stop there no 
longer, she came out. Then, because 
she was never- to be more than ten 
years old, however long she lived — ” 
“ However long she lived,” echoed 
Maggy. 

“ And because she was very weak, — 
indeed was so weak that when she be- 
gan to laugh she could n’t stop herself, 
which was a great pity — ” 

(Maggy mighty grave of a sudden.) 

“ — Her grandmother did not know 
what to do with her, and for some years 
was very unkind to her indeed. At 
length, in course of time, Maggy began 
to take pains to improve herself, and to 
be very attentive and very industrious ; 
and by degrees was allowed to come in 
and out as often as she liked, and got 
enough to do to support herself, and 
does support herself. And that,” said 
Little Dorrit, clapping the two great 
hands together again, “ is Maggy’s his- 
tory, as Maggy knows ! ” 

Ah ! But Arthur would have known 
what was wanting to its complete- 
ness, though he had never heard the 
words “little mother,” — though he had 
never seen the fondling of the small, 
spare hand, — though he had had no 
sight for the tears now standing in the 
colorless eyes, — though he had had no 
hearing for the sob that checked the 
clumsy laugh. The dirty gateway, 


with the wind and rain whistling through 
it, and the basket of muddy potatoes 
waiting to be spilt again or taken up, 
never seemed the common hole it really 
was when he looked back to it by these 
lights. Never, never ! 

They were very near the end of their 
walk, and they now came out of the 
gateway to finish it. Nothing would 
serve Maggy but that they must stop at 
a grocer’s window, short of their des- 
tination, for her to show her learning. 
She could read after a sort, and picked 
out the fat figures in the tickets of 
prices for the most part correctly. She 
also stumbled, with a large balance of 
success against her failures, through 
various philanthropic recommendations 
to Try our Mixture, Try our Family 
Black, Try our Orange-flavored Pekoe, 
challenging competition at the head of 
Flowery Teas, and various cautions to 
the public against spurious establish- 
ments and adulterated articles. When 
he saw how pleasure brought a rosy 
tint into Dorrit’s face when Maggy 
made a hit, he felt that he could have 
stood there making a library of the 
grocer’s window until the rain and wind 
were tired. 

The courtyard received them at last, 
and there he said good by to Little 
Dorrit. Little as she had always looked, 
she looked less than ever when he saw 
her going into the Marshalsea lodge 
passage, the little mother attended by 
her big child. 

The cage door opened, and when the 
small bird, reared in captivity, had 
tamely fluttered in, he saw it shut 
again ; and then he came away. 


CHAPTER X. 

CONTAINING THE WHOLE SCIENCE OF 
GOVERNMENT. 

The Circumlocution Office was (as 
everybody knows without being told) 
the most important Department under 
government. No public business of 
any kind could possibly be done at any 
time, without the acquiescence of the 
Circumlocution Office. Its finger was 


6o 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


in the largest public pie, and in the 
smallest public tart. It was equally im- 
possible to do the plainest right and to 
undo the plainest wrong, without the 
express authority of the Circumlocution 
Office. If another Gunpowder Plot had 
been discovered half an hour before the 
lighting of the match, nobody would 
have been justified in saving the Parlia- 
ment until there had been half a score 
of boards, half a bushel of minutes, 
several sacks of official memoranda, 
and a family-vault full of ungrammati- 
cal correspondence, on the part of the 
Circumlocution Office. 

This glorious establishment had been 
early in the field, when the one sublime 
principle involving the difficult art of 
governing a country was first distinctly 
revealed to statesmen. It had been 
foremost to study that bright revela- 
tion, and to carry its shining influence 
through the whole of the official pro- 
ceedings. Whatever was required to 
be done, the Circumlocution Office was 
beforehand with all the public depart- 
ments in the art of perceiving — how 
not TO DO IT. 

Through this delicate perception, 
through the tact with which it invaria- 
bly seized it, and through the genius 
with which it always acted on it, the 
Circumlocution Office had risen to over- 
top all the public departments ; and the 
public condition had risen to be — 
what it was. 

It is true that How not to do it was 
the great study and object of all public 
departments and professional politicians 
all round the Circumlocution Office. It 
is true that every new premier and 
every new government, coming in be- 
cause they had upheld a certain thing 
as necessary to be done, were no soon- 
er come in than they applied their ut- 
most faculties to discovering How not 
to do it. It is true that from the mo- 
ment when a general election was over, 
every returned man who had been rav- 
ing on hustings because it had n’t been 
done, and who had been asking the 
friends of the honorable gentleman in 
the opposite interest on pain of impeach- 
ment to tell him why it had n’t been 
done, and who had been asserting that it 
must be done, and who had been pledg- 


ing himself that it should be done, be- 
gan to devise How it was not to be 
done. It is true that the debates of 
both Houses of Parliament the whole 
session through, uniformly tended to 
the protracted deliberation, How not to 
do it. It is true that the royal speech 
at the opening of such session virtually 
said, My lords and gentlemen, you have 
a considerable stroke of work to do, and 
you will please to retire to your respec- 
tive chambers, and discuss How not to 
do it. It is true that the royal speech, 
at the close of such session virtually 
said, My lords and gentlemen, you 
have through several laborious months 
been considering, with great loyalty and 
patriotism, How not to do it, and you 
have found out ; and with the blessing 
of Providence upon the harvest (natu- 
ral, not political), I now dismiss you. 
All this is true, but the Circumlocution 
Office went beyond it. 

Because the Circumlocution Office 
went on mechanically, every day, keep- 
ing this wonderful, all-sufficient wheel of 
statesmanship, How not to do it, in mo- 
tion. Because the Circumlocution Office 
was down upon any ill-advised public 
servant who was going to do it, or who 
appeared to be by any surprising acci- 
dent in remote danger of doing it, with 
a minute, and a memorandum, and a 
letter of instructions, that extinguished 
him. It was this spirit of national effi- 
ciency in the Circumlocution Office that 
had gradually led to its having some- 
thing to do with everything. Mechani- 
cians, natural philosophers, soldiers, 
sailors, petitioners, memorialists, peo- 
ple with grievances, people who wanted 
to prevent grievances, people who 
wanted to redress grievances, jobbing 
people, jobbed people, people who 
could n’t get rewarded for merit, and 
people who couldn’t get punished for 
demerit, were all indiscriminately tucked 
up under the foolscap paper of the Cir- 
cumlocution Office. 

Numbers of people were lost in the 
Circumlocution Office. Unfortunates 
with wrongs, or with projects for the 
general welfare (and they had better 
have had wrongs at first, than have 
taken that bitter English recipe for 
certainly getting them), who in slow 


LITTLE DORR IT. 


61 


lapse of time and agony had passed 
safely through other public depart- 
ments, — who, according to rule, had 
been bullied in this, overreached by 
that, and evaded by the other, — got re- 
ferred at last to the Circumlocution Of- 
fice, and never reappeared in the light 
of day. Boards sat upon them, secreta- 
ries minuted upon them, commissioners 
gabbled about them, clerks registered, 
entered, checked, and ticked them off, 
and they melted away. In short, all 
the business of the country went through 
the Circumlocution Office, except the 
business that never came out of it ; and 
its name was Legion. 

Sometimes angry spirits attacked the 
Circumlocution Office. Sometimes par- 
liamentary questions were asked about 
it, and even parliamentary motions 
made or threatened about it, by dema- 
gogues so low and ignorant as to hold 
that the real recipe of government was 
How to do it. Then would the noble 
lord, or right honorable gentleman, in 
whose department it was to defend the 
Circumlocution Office, put an orange 
in his pocket, and make a regular field- 
day of the occasion. Then would he 
come down to that House with a slap 
upon the table, and meet the honorable 
gentleman foot to foot. Then would 
he be there to tell that honorable gen- 
tleman that the Circumlocution Office 
not only was blameless in this matter, 
but was commendable in this matter, 
was extollable to the skies in this mat- 
ter. Then would he be there to tell 
that honorable gentleman, that, al- 
though the Circumlocution Office was 
invariably right and wholly right, it 
never was so right as in this matter. 
Then would he be there to tell that 
honorable gentleman that it would have 
been more to his honor, more to his 
credit, more to his good taste, more to 
his good sense, more to half the dic- 
tionary of commonplaces, if he had left 
the Circumlocution Office alone, and 
never approached this matter. Then 
would he keep one eye upon a coach or 
crammer from the Circumlocution Of- 
fice sitting below the bar, and smash 
the honorable gentleman with the Cir- 
cumlocution Office account of this mat- 
ter. And although one of two things 


always happened ; namely, either that 
the Circumlocution Office had nothing 
to say and said it, or that it had some- 
thing to say of which the noble lord, 
or right honorable gentleman, blun- 
dered one half and forgot the other; 
the Circumlocution Office was always 
voted immaculate by an accommodat- 
ing majority. 

Such a nursery of statesmen had the 
Department become in virtue of a long 
career of this nature, that several sol- 
emn lords had attained the reputation 
of being quite unearthly prodigies of 
business, solely from having practised 
How not to do it, at the head of the 
Circumlocution Office. As to the mi- 
nor priests and acolytes of that 
temple, the result of all this was that 
they stood divided into two classes, and, 
down to the junior messenger, either 
believed in the Circumlocution Office 
as a heaven-born institution, that had 
an absolute right to do whatever it 
liked ; or took refuge in total infidelity, 
and considered it a flagrant nuisance. 

The Barnacle family had for some 
time helped to administer the Circum- 
locution Office. The Tite Barnacle 
Branch, indeed, considered themselves 
in a general way as having vested rights 
in that direction, and took it ill if any 
other family had much to say to it. 
The Barnacles were a very high family, 
and a very large family. They were 
dispersed all over the public offices, and 
held all sorts of public places. Either 
the nation was under a load of obliga- 
tion to the Barnacles, or the Barnacles 
were under a load of obligation to the 
nation. It was not quite unanimously 
settled which ; the Barnacles having 
their opinion, the nation theirs. 

The .Mr. Tite Barnacle who at the 
period now in question usually coached 
or crammed the statesman at the head 
of the Circumlocution Office, when 
that noble or right honorable individu- 
al sat a little uneasily in his saddle, by 
reason of some vagabond making a tilt 
at him in a newspaper, was more flush 
of blood than money. As a Barnacle 
he had his place, which was a snug 
thing enough ; and as a Barnacle he 
had of course put in his son Barnacle 
Junior in the office. But he had inter- 


62 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


married with a branch of the Stiltstalk- 
ings, who were also better endowed in 
a sanguineous point of view than with 
real or personal property, and of this 
marriage there had been issue, Barnacle 
Junior, and three young ladies. What 
with the patrician requirements of Bar- 
nacle Junior, the three young ladies, 
Mrs. Tite Barnacle nee Stiltstalking, 
and himself, Mr. Tite Barnacle found 
the intervals between quarter day and 
quarter day rather longer than he could 
have desired, — a circumstance which 
he always attributed to the country’s 
parsimony. 

For Mr. Tite Barnacle Mr. Arthur 
Clennam made his fifth inquiry one day 
at the Circumlocution Office ; having 
on previous occasions awaited that gen- 
tleman successively in a hall, a glass 
case, a waiting-room, and a fire-proof 
passage where the Department seemed 
to keep its wind. On this occasion Mr. 
Barnacle was not engaged, as he had 
been before, with the noble prodigy at 
the head of the Department ; but was 
absent. Barnacle Junior, however, was 
announced as a lesser star yet visible 
above the office horizon. 

With Barnacle Junior he signified his 
desire to confer ; and found that young 
gentleman singeing the calves of his 
legs at the parental fire, and supporting 
his spine against the mantel-shelf. It 
was a comfortable room handsomely 
furnished in the higher official manner ; 
and presenting stately suggestions of 
the absent Barnacle in the thick carpet, 
the leather-covered desk to sit at, the 
leather-covered desk to stand at, the for- 
midable easy-chair and hearth-rug, the 
interposed screen, the torn-up papers, 
the despatch-boxes with little labels 
sticking out of them, like medicine bot- 
tles or dead game, the pervading smell 
of leather and mahoganv, and a gen- 
eral bamboozling air of How not to do 
it. 

The present Barnacle, holding Mr. 
Clennam’s card in his hand, had a 
youthful aspect, and the fluffiest little 
whisker, perhaps, that ever was seen. 
Such a downy tip was on his callow chin, 
that he seemed half fledged like a young 
bird ; and a compassionate observer 
might have urged, that if he had not 


singed the calves of his legs, he would 
have died of cold. He had a superior 
eye-glass dangling round his neck, but 
unfortunately had such flat orbits to his 
eyes, and such limp little eyelids, that 
it would n’t stick in when he put it up, 
but kept tumbling out against his waist- 
coat buttons with a click that discom- 
posed him very much. 

“ O, I say. Look here ! My fa- 
ther ’s not in the way, and won’t be in 
the way to-day,” said Barnacle Junior. 
“Is this anything that I can do ? ” 

(Click ! Eye-glass down. Barnacle 
Junior quite frightened and feeling all 
round himself, but not able to find it.) 

“ You are very good,” said Arthur 
Clennam. “ I wish, however, to see 
Mr. Barnacle.” 

“ But I say. Look here ! You 
haven’t got any appointment, you 
know,” said Barnacle Junior. 

(By this time he had found the eye- 
glass, and put it up again.) 

“ No,” said Arthur Clennam. “That 
is what I wish to have.” 

“ But I say. Look here ! Is this 
public business? ” asked Barnacle Jun- 
ior. 

(Click ! _ Eye-glass down again. Bar- 
nacle Junior in that state of search af- 
ter it, that Mr. Clennam felt it useless 
to reply at present.) 

“ Is it,” said Barnacle Junior, taking 
heed of his visitor’s brown face, “ any- 
thing about — Tonnage — or that sort 
of thing? ” 

(Pausing for a reply, he opened his 
right eye with his hand, and stuck his 
glass in it, in that inflammatory man- 
ner that his eye began watering dread- 
fully. ) 

“ No,” said Arthur, “ it is nothing 
about tonnage.” 

“ Then look here. Is it private busi- 
ness ? ” 

“ I really am not sure. It relates to 
a Mr. Dorrit.” 

“ Look here, I tell you what ! You 
had better call at our house, if you are 
going that way. Twenty-four Mews 
Street, Grosvenor Square. M y father ’s 
got a slight touch of the gout, and is 
kept at home by it.” 

(The misguided young Barnacle evi- 
dently going blind on his eye-glass side, 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


63 


but ashamed to make any further alter- 
ation in his painful arrangements.) 

“ Thank you. I will call there now. 
Good morning.” Young Barnacle 
seemed discomfited at this, as not hav- 
ing at all expected him to go. 

“You are quite sure,” said Barnacle 
Junior, calling after him when he got to 
the door, unwilling wholly to relinquish 
the bright business idea he had con- 
ceived, “that it’s nothing about Ton- 
nage ? ” 

“ Quite sure.” 

With which assurance, and rather 
wondering what might have taken place 
if it had been anything about tonnage, 
Mr. Clennam withdrew to pursue his 
inquiries. 

Mews Street, Grosvenor Square, was 
not absolutely Grosvenor Square it- 
self, but it was very near it. It was a 
hideous little street of dead wall, sta- 
bles, and dunghills, with lofts over 
coach-houses inhabited by coachmen’s 
families, who had a passion for drying 
clothes, and decorating their window- 
sills with miniature turnpike-gates. The 
principal chimney-sweep of that fash- 
ionable quarter lived at the blind end of 
Mews Street ; and the same corner con- 
tained an establishment much frequent- 
ed about early morning and twilight, for 
the purchase of wine-bottles and kitch- 
en stuff. Punch’s shows used to lean 
against the dead wall in Mews Street, 
while their proprietors were dining else- 
where ; and the dogs of the neighbor- 
hood made appointments to meet in the 
same locality. Yet there were two or 
three small airless houses at the en- 
trance end of Mews Street, which went 
at enormous rents on account of their 
being abject hangers-on to a fashiona- 
ble situation ; and whenever one of 
these fearful little coops was to be let, 
(which seldom happened, for they were 
in great request), the house agent ad- 
vertised it as a gentlemanly residence 
in the most aristocratic part of town, 
inhabited solely by the elite of the 
beau monde. 

If a gentlemanly residence coming 
strictly within this narrow margin had 
not been essential to the blood of the 
Barnacles, this particular branch would 
have had a pretty wide selection among 


let us say ten thousand houses, offering 
fifty times the accommodation for a 
third of the money. As it was, Mr. 
Barnacle, finding his gentlemanly resi- 
dence extremely inconvenient and ex- 
tremely dear, always laid it, as a pub- 
lic servant, at the door of the country, 
and adduced it as another instance of 
the country’s parsimony. 

Arthur Clennam came to a squeezed 
house, with a ramshackle bowed front, 
little dingy windows, and a little dark 
area like a damp waistcoat-pocket, which 
he found to be number twenty-four, 
Mews Street, Grosvenor Square. To 
the sense of smell the house was like a 
sort of bottle filled with a strong dis- 
tillation of mews ; and when the footman 
opened the door, he seemed to take the 
stopper out. 

The footman was to the Grosvenor 
Square footmen what the house was to 
the Grosvenor Square houses. Admira- 
ble in his way, his way was a back and 
a by way. His gorgeousness was not 
unmixed with dirt ; and both in com- 
plexion and consistency he had suffered 
from the closeness of his pantry. A 
sallow flabbiness was upon him, when 
he took the stopper out, and presented 
the bottle to Mr. Clennam’s nose. 

“ Be so good as to give that card to 
Mr. Tite Barnacle, and to say that I 
have just now seen the younger Mr. 
Barnacle, who recommended me to call 
here.” 

The footman (who had as many large 
buttons with the Barnacle crest upon 
them, on the flaps of his pockets, as if 
he were the family strong-box, and car- 
ried the plate and jewels about with 
him buttoned up) pondered over the 
card a little ; then said, “ Walk in.” It 
required some judgment to do it with- 
out butting the inner hall door open, and, 
in the consequent mental confusion and 
physical darkness slipping down the 
kitchen stairs. The visitor, however, 
brought himself up safely on the door- 
mat. 

Still the footman said, “Walk in,” so 
the visitor followed him. At the inner 
hall door, another bottle seemed to be 
presented and another stopper taken 
out. The second vial appeared to be 
filled with concentrated provisions, and 


LITTLE D0RR1T. 


64 - 

extract of Sink from the pantry. After 
a skirmish in the narrow passage, oc- 
casioned by the footman’s opening the 
door of the dismal dining-room with 
confidence, finding some one therewith 
consternation, and backing on the vis- 
itor with disorder, the visitor was shut 
up, pending his announcement, in a 
close back parlor. There he had an 
opportunity of refreshing himself with 
both the bottles at once, looking out at 
a low blinding back wall three feet off, 
and speculating on the number of Bar- 
nacle families within the bills of mor- 
tality who lived in such hutches of their 
own free flunky choice. 

Mr. Barnacle would see him. Would 
he walk up stairs ? He would, and he 
did ; and in the drawing-room, with his 
leg on a rest, he found Mr. Barnacle 
himself, the express image and present- 
ment of How not to do it. 

Mr. Barnacle dated from a better 
time, when the country was not so par- 
simonious, and the Circumlocution Of- 
fice was not so badgered. He wound 
and wound folds of white cravat round 
his neck, as he wound and wound folds 
of tape and paper round the neck of the 
country. His wristbands and collar 
were oppressive, his voice and manner 
were oppressive. He had a large 
w atch-chain and bunch of seals, a coat 
buttoned up to inconvenience, a waist- 
coat buttoned up to inconvenience, an 
unwrinkled pair of trousers, a stiff pair 
of boots. He was altogether splendid, 
massive, overpowering, and impractica- 
ble. He seemed to have been sitting 
for his portrait to Sir Thomas Lawrence 
all the days of his life. 

“ Mr. Clennam?” said Mr. Barnacle. 
“Be seated.” 

Mr. Clennam became seated. 

“ You have called on me, I believe,” 
said Mr. Barnacle, “ at the Circumlo- 
cution ” — giving it the air of a w'ord of 
about five-and-twenty syllables — “Of- 
fice.” 

“ I have taken that liberty.” 

Mr. Barnacle solemnly bent his head 
as who should say, “ I do not deny that 
it is a liberty ; proceed to take another 
liberty, and let me know your busi- 
ness.” 

“Allow me to observe that I have 


been for some years in China, am quite 
a stranger at home, and have no per- 
sonal motive or interest in the inquiry I 
am about to make.” 

Mr. Barnacle tapped his fingers on 
the table, and, as if he w'ere now sitting 
for his portrait to a new and strange art- 
ist, appeared to say to his visitor, “ If 
you w'ill be good enough to take me 
with my present lofty expression, I shall 
feel obliged.” 

“ I have found a debtor in the.-Mar- 
shalsea prison of the name of Dorrit 
who has been there many years. I 
wish to investigate his confused affairs, 
so far as to ascertain whether it may 
not be possible, after this lapse of time, 
to ameliorate his unhappy condition. 
The name of Mr. Tite Barnacle has 
been mentioned to me as representing 
some highly influential interest among 
his creditors. Am I correctly in- 
formed?” 

It being one of the principles of the 
Circumlocution Office never, on any 
account whatever, to give a straightfor- 
ward answer, Mr. Barnacle said, “Pos- 
sibly.” 

“ On behalf of the Crown, may I ask, 
or as a private individual ? ” 

“ The Circumlocution Department, 
sir,” Mr. Barnacle replied, “may have 
possibly recommended — possibly — I 
cannot say — that some public claim 
against the insolvent estate of a firm or 
copartnership to w'hich this person may 
have belonged, should be enforced. 
The question may have been, in the 
course of official business, referred to 
the Circumlocution Department for its 
consideration. The Department may 
have either originated, or confirmed a 
Minute making that recommendation.” 

“ I assume this to be the case, then.” 

“ The Circumlocution Department,” 
said Mr. Barnacle, “ is not responsible 
for any gentleman’s assumptions.” 

“ May I inquire how I can obtain 
official information as to the real state 
of the .case? ” 

“ It is competent,” said Mr. Bar- 
nacle, “to any member of the — Pub- 
lic,” mentioning that obscure body w ith 
reluctance, as his natural enemy, “ to 
memorialize the Circumlocution De- 
partment. Such formalities as arc re- 


LITTLE DORR1T. 


65 


quired to be observed in so doing may 
be known on application to the proper 
branch of that Department.” 

“ Which is the proper branch ? ” 

“ I must refer you,” returned Mr. 
Barnacle, ringing the bell, “ to the De- 
partment itself for a formal answer to 
that inquiry.” 

“ Excuse my mentioning — ” 

“ The Department is accessible to 
the — Public.” Mr. Barnacle was al- 
ways checked a little by that word of 
impertinent signification. “ If the — 
Public approaches it according to the 
official forms ; if the — Public does not 
approach it according to the official 
forms, the — Public has itself to 
blame.” 

Mr. Barnacle made him a severe 
bow, as a wounded man of family, a 
wounded man of place, and a wounded 
man of a gentlemanly residence, all 
rolled into one ; and he made Mr. Bar- 
nacle a bow, and was shut out into 
Mews Street by the flabby footman. 

Having got to this pass, he resolved, 
as an exercise in perseverance, to be- 
take himself again to the Circumlocu- 
tion Office, and try what satisfaction he 
could get there. So he went back to 
the Circumlocution Office, and once 
more sent up his card to Barnacle Jun- 
ior by a messenger who took it very ill 
indeed that he should come back again, 
and who was eating mashed potatoes 
and gravy behind a partition by the hall 
fire. 

He was readmitted to the presence of 
Barnacle Junior, and found that young 
gentleman singeing his knees now, and 
gaping his weary way on to four o’clock. 

“ I say. Look here. You stick to 
us in a devil of a manner,” said Bar- 
nacle Junior, looking over his shoulder. 

“ I want to know — ” 

“ Look here. Upon my soul you 
must n’t come into the place saying 
you want to know, you know,” remon- 
strated Barnacle Junior, turning about, 
and putting up the eye-glass. 

“ I want to know,” said Arthur Clen- 
*nam, who had made up his mind to 
persistence in one short form of words, 
“ the precise nature of the claim of the 
Crown against a prisoner for debt 
named Dorrit.” 


“ I say. Look here. You really are 
going it at a great pace, you know. 
Egad, you haven’t got an appoint- 
ment,” said Barnacle Junior, as if the 
thing were growing serious. 

“ I want to know — ” said Arthur. 
And repeated his case. 

Barnacle Junior stared at him until 
his eye-glass fell out, and then put it in 
again, and stared at him until it fell out 
again. “ You have no right to come 
this sort of move,” he then observed 
with the greatest weakness. “ Look 
here. What do you mean ? You told 
me you did n’t know whether it was 
public business or not.” 

“ I have now ascertained that it is 
public business,” returned the suitor, 
“ and I want to know ” — and again re- 
peated his monotonous inquiry. 

Its effect upon young Barnacle was 
to make him repeat in a defenceless 
way, “ Look here ! Upon my soul, 
you mustn’t come into the place, say- 
ing you want to know, you know ! ” 
The effect of that upon Arthur Clen- 
nara was to make him repeat his in- 
quiry in exactly the same words and 
tone as before. The effect of that upon 
young Barnacle was to make him a 
wonderful spectacle of failure and help- 
lessness. 

“ Well, I tell you what. Look here. 
You had better try the Secretarial De- 
partment,” he said at last, sidling to 
the bell and ringing it. “Jenkinson,” 
to the mashed - potatoes messenger, 
“Mr. Wobbler!” 

Arthur Clennam, who now felt that 
he had devoted himself to the storming 
of the Circumlocution Office, and must 
go through with it, accompanied the 
messenger to another floor of the build- 
ing, where that functionary pointed out 
Mr. Wobbler’s room. He entered that 
apartment, and found two gentlemen 
sitting face to face at a large and easy 
desk, one of whom was polishihg a 
gun-barrel on his pocket-handkerchief, 
while the other was spreading marma- 
lade on bread with a paper-knife. 

“ Mr. Wobbler? ” inquired the suitor. 

Both gentlemen glanced at him, and 
seemed surprised at this assurance. 

“ So he went,” said the gentleman 
with the gun-barrel, who was an ex- 


5 


66 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


tremely deliberate speaker, “ down to 
his cousin’s place, and took the Dog 
with him by rail. Inestimable Dog. 
Flew at the porter fellow when he was 
put into the dog-box, and flew at the 
guard when he was taken out. He got 
half a dozen fellows into a Barn, and a 
good supply of Rats, and timed the 
Dog. Finding the Dog able to do it 
immensely, made the match, and heav- 
ily backed the Dog. When the match 
came off, some devil of a fellow was 
bought over, sir, Dog was made drunk, 
Dog’s master was cleaned out.” 

“Mr. Wobbler?” inquired the suit- 
or. 

The gentleman who was spreading 
the marmalade returned, without look- 
ing up from that occupation, “ What 
did he call the Dog?” 

“Called him Lovely,” said the other 
gentleman. “ Said the Dog was the 
perfect picture of the old aunt from 
whom he has expectations. Found him 
particularly like her when hocussed.” 

“ Mr. Wobbler? ” said the suitor. 

Both gentlemen laughed for some 
time. The gentleman with the gun- 
barrel, considering it on inspection in 
a satisfactory state, referred it to the 
other; receiving confirmation of his 
views, he fitted it into its place in the 
case before him, and took out the stock 
and polished that, softly whistling. 

“ Mr. Wobbler? ” said the suitor. 

“ What ’s the matter,” then said Mr. 
Wobbler, with his mouth full. 

“I want to know — ” And Arthur 
Clennam again mechanically set forth 
what he wanted to know. 

“ Can’t inform you,” observed Mr. 
Wobbler, apparently to his lunch. 
“ Never heard of it. Nothing at all to 
do with it. Better try Mr. Clive, sec- 
ond door on the left in the next pas- 
sage.” 

“ Perhaps he will give me the same 
answer.” 

“Very likely. Don’t know anything 
about it,” said Mr. Wobbler. 

The suitor turned away and had left 
the room, when the gentleman with the 
gun called out, “ Mister ! Hallo ! ” 

He looked in again. 

“Shut the door after you. You’re 
letting in a devil of a draught here ! ” 


A few steps brought him to the sec- 
ond door on the left in the next passage. 

In that room he found three gentle- 
men ; number one doing nothing par- 
ticular, number two doing nothing par- 
ticular, number three doing nothing 
particular. They seemed, however, to 
be more directly concerned than the 
others had been in the effective execu- 
tion of the great principle of the of- 
fice as there was an awful inner apart- 
ment with a double door, in which the 
Circumlocution Sages appeared to 
be assembled in council, and out of 
which there was an imposing coming 
of papers, and into which there was 
an imposing going of papers, almost 
constantly ; wherein another gentle- 
man, number four, was the active in- 
strument. 

“ I want to know,” said Arthur 
Clennam, — and again stated his case 
in the same barrel-organ way. As 
number one referred him to number 
two, and as number two referred him 
to number three, he had occasion to 
state it three times before they all re- 
ferred him to number four. To whom 
he stated it again. 

Number four was a vivacious, well- 
looking, well-dressed, agreeable young 
fellow, — he was a Barnacle, but on the 
more sprightly side of the family, — and 
he said in an easy way, “ O, you had 
better not bother yourself about it, I 
think.” 

“ Not bother myself about it ? ” 

“ No ! I recommend you not to 
bother yourself about it.” 

This was such a new point of view 
that Arthur Clennam found himself at 
a loss how to receive it. 

“ You can if you like. I can give 
you plenty of forms to fill up. Lots of 
’em here. You can have a dozen if you 
like. But you ’ll never go on with it,” 
said number four. 

“Would it be such hopeless work? 
Excuse me ; I am a stranger in Eng- 
land.” 

“/ don’t say it would be hopeless,” 
returned number 'four, with a frank # 
smile. “ I don’t express an opinion 
about that ; I only express an opinion 
about you. / don’t think you ’d go on 
with it. However, of course, you 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


67 


can do as you like. I suppose there 
was a failure in the performance of a 
contract, or something of that kind, was 
there ? ” 

“ I really don’t know.” 

“Well! That you can find out. 
Then you ’ll find out what Department 
the contract was in, and then you ’ll 
find out all about it there.” 

“ I beg your pardon. How shall I 
find out ? ” 

“Why, you’ll — you’ll ask till they 
tell you. Then you ’ll memorialize 
that Department (according to regular 
forms which you ’ll find out) for leave 
to memorialize this Department. If 
you get it (which you may after a time), 
that memorial must be entered in that 
Department, sent to be registered in this 
Department, sent back to be signed by 
that Department, sent back to be coun- 
tersigned by this Department, and then 
it will begin to be regularly before that 
Department. You ’ll find out when the 
business passes through each of these 
stages, by asking at both Departments 
till they tell you.” 

“ But surely this is not the way to do 
the business,” Arthur Clennam could 
not help saying. 

This airy young Barnacle was quite 
entertained by his simplicity in suppos- 
ing for a moment that it was. This 
light-in-hand young Barnacle knew per- 
fectly that it was not. This touch-and- 
go young Barnacle had “got up” the 
Department in a private secretaryship, 
that he might be ready for any little 
bit of fat that came to hand ; and he 
fully understood the Department to be 
a politico-diplomatico hocus-pocus piece 
of machinery, for the assistance of the 
nobs in keeping off the snobs. This 
dashing young Barnacle, in a word, was 
likely to become a statesman, and to 
make a figure. 

“ When the business is regularly be- 
fore that Department, whatever it is,” 
pursued this bright young Barnacle, 
“ then you can watch it from time to 
time through that Department. When 
it comes regularly before this Depart- 
ment, then you must watch it from time 
to time through this Department. We 
shall have to refer it right and left ; and 
when we refer it anywhere, then you ’ll 


have to look it up. When it comes back 
to us at any time, then you had better look 
us up. When it sticks anywhere, you ’ll 
have to try to give it a jog. When you 
write to another Department about it, 
and then to this Department about it, 
and don’t hear anything satisfactory 
about it, why then you had better — 
keep on writing.” 

Arthur Clennam looked very doubtful 
indeed. “ But I am obliged to you at 
any rate,” said he, “for your polite- 
ness.” 

“Not at all,” replied this engaging 
young Barnacle. “ Try the thing, and 
see how you like it. It will be in your 
power to give it up at any time, if you 
don’t like it. You had better take a lot 
of forms away with you. Give him a 
lot of forms ! ” With which instruction 
to number two, this sparkling young 
Barnacle took a fresh handful of papers 
from numbers one and three, and car- 
ried them into the sanctuary, to offer to 
the presiding Idols of the Circumlocu- 
tion Office. 

Arthur Clennam put his forms in his 
pocket gloomily enough, and went his 
way down the long stone passage and the 
long stone staircase. He had come to the 
swing doors leading into the street, and 
was waiting, not over patiently, for two 
people who were between him and them 
to pass out and let him follow, when the 
voice of one of them struck familiarly on 
his ear. He looked at the speaker and 
recognized Mr. Meagles. Mr. Mea- 
gles was very red in. the face, — redder 
than travel could have made him, — and, 
collaring a short man who was with him, 
said, “ Come out, you rascal, come 
out ! ” 

It was such an unexpected hearing, 
and it was also such an unexpected 
sight to see Mr. Meagles burst the 
swing doors open, and emerge into the 
street with the short man, who was 
of an unoffending appearance, that 
Clennam stood still for the moment 
exchanging looks of surprise with 
the porter. He followed, however, 
quickly; and saw Mr. Meagles going 
down the street with his enemy at his 
side. He soon came up with his old 
travelling companion, and touched him 
on the back. The choleric face which 


68 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


Mr. Meagles turned upon him smoothed 
when he saw who it was, and he put 
out his friendly hand. 

“ How are you ! ” said Mr. Meagles. 
“ How d’ ye do ! I have only just come 
over from abroad. I am glad to see 
you.” 

“ And I am rejoiced to see you.” 

“ Thank’ee. Thank’ee ! ” 

“Mrs. Meagles and your daugh- 
ter — ? ” 

“Are as well as possible,” said Mr. 
Meagles. “ I only wish you had come 
upon me in a more prepossessing condi- 
tion as to coolness.” 

Though it was anything but a hot day, 
Mr. Meagles was in a heated state that 
attracted the attention of the passers- 
by; more particularly as he leaned his 
back against a railing, took off his hat 
and cravat, and heartily rubbed his 
steaming head and face, and his red- 
dened ears and neck, without the least 
regard for public opinion. 

“ Whew ! ” said Mr. Meagles, dress- 
ing again. “ That ’s comfortable. 
Now I am cooler.” 

“You have been ruffled, Mr. Mea- 
gles. What is the matter?” 

“ Wait a bit, and I ’ll tell you. Have 
you leisure for a turn in the Park ? ” 

“As much as you please.” 

“ Come along then. Ah ! you may 
well look at him.” He happened to 
have turned his eyes towards the offend- 
er whom Mr. Meagles had so angrily 
collared. “ He ’s something to look at, 
that fellow is.” 

He was not much to look at, either in 
point of size or in point of dress ; being 
merely a short, square, practical-looking 
man, whose hair had turned gray, and 
in whose face and forehead there were 
deep lines of cogitation, which looked 
as though they were carved in hard 
wood. He was dressed in decent black, 
a little rusty, and had the appearance 
of a sagacious master in some handi- 
craft. He had a spectacle-case in his 
hand, which he turned over and over 
while he was thus in question, with a 
certain free use of the thumb that is 
never seen but in a hand accustomed to 
tools. 

“You keep with us,” said Mr. Mea- 
gles, in a threatening kind of way. 


“and I’ll introduce you presently. 
Now, then ! ” 

Clennam wondered within himself, 
as they took the nearest way to the 
Park, what this unknown (who complied 
in the gentlest manner) could have been 
doing. His appearance did not at all 
justify the suspicion that he had been 
detected in designs on Mr. Meagles’s 
pocket-handkerchief ; nor had he any 
appearance of being quarrelsome or 
violent. He was a quiet, plain, steady 
man ; made no attempt to escape ; and 
seemed a little depressed, but neither 
ashamed nor repentant. If he were a 
criminal offender, he must surely be an 
incorrigible hypocrite ; and if he were 
no offender, why should Mr. Meagles 
have collared him in the Circumlocution 
Office ? He perceived that the man 
was not a difficulty in his own mind 
alone, but in Mr. Meagles’s too ; for 
such conversation as they had together 
on the short way to the Park was by no 
means well sustained, and Mr. Mea- 
gles’s eye always wandered back to the 
man, even when he spoke of something 
very different. 

At length, they being among the 
trees, Mr. Meagles stopped short, and 
said, — 

“ Mr. Clennam, will you do me the 
favor to look at this man ? His name 
is Doyce, Daniel Doyce. You would 
n’t suppose this man to be a notorious 
rascal, would you?” 

“ I certainly should not.” It was 
really a disconcerting question, with the 
man there. 

“No. You would not. I know you 
would not. You wouldn’t suppose him 
to be a public offender ; would you ? ” 

“No.” 

“ No. But he is. He is a public 
offender. What has he been guilty of? 
Murder, manslaughter, arson, forgery, 
swindling, housebreaking, highway- rob- 
bery, larceny, conspiracy, fraud? Which 
should you say, no*?” 

“ I should say,” returned Arthur 
Clennam, observing a faint smile in 
Daniel Doyce’s face, “not one of 
them.” 

“You are right,” said Mr. Meagles. 
“ But he has been ingenious, and he 
has been trying to turn his ingenuity to 


LITTLE DORR IT. 


69 


his country’s service. That makes him 
a public offender directly, sir.” 

Arthur looked at the man himself, 
who only shook his head. 

“This Doyce,” said Mr. Meagles, 
“ is a smith and engineer. He is not in 
a large way, but he is well known as a 
very ingenious man. A dozen years 
ago, he perfects an invention (involving 
a very curious secret process) of great 
importance to his country and his fellow- 
creatures. I won’t say how much mon- 
ey it cost him, or how many years of 
his life he had been about it, but he 
brought it to perfection a dozen years 
ago. Wasn’t it a dozen? ’’said Mr. 
Meagles, addressing Doyce. “He is 
the most exasperating man in the world ; 
he never complains ' ” 

“Yes. Rather better than twelve 
years ago.” 

“ Rather better? ” said Mr. Meagles. 
“ You mean rather worse. Well, Mr. 
Clennam. He addresses himself to the 
government. The moment he address- 
es himself to the government, he be- 
comes a public offender ! Sir,” said 
Mr. Meagles, in danger of making him- 
self excessively hot again, “ he ceases 
to be an innocent citizen, and becomes 
a culprit. He is treated, from that in- 
stant, as a man who has done some in- 
fernal action. He is a man to be shirked, 
put off, brow-beaten, sneered at, handed 
over by this highly connected young or 
old gentleman to that highly connected 
young or old gentleman, and dodged 
back again ; he is a man w'ith no rights 
in his own time, or his own property ; 
a mere outlaw, whom it is justifiable to 
get rid of anyhow ; a man to be worn 
out by all possible means.” 

It was not so difficult to believe, after 
the morning’s experience, as Mr. Mea- 
gles supposed. 

“ Don’t stand there, Doyce, turning 
your spectacle-case over and over,” 
cried Mr. Meagles, “ but tell Mr. Clen- 
nam what you confessed to me.” 

“ I undoubtedly was made to feel,” 
said the inventor, “as if I had com- 
mitted an offence. In dancing attend- 
ance at the various offices, I was al- 
ways treated, more or less, as if it was a 
very bad offence. I have frequently 
found it necessary to reflect, for my own 


self-support, that I really had not done 
anything to bring myself into the New- 
gate Calendar, but only wanted to ef- 
fect a great saving and a great improve- 
ment.” 

“ There ! ” said Mr. Meagles. “Judge 
whether I exaggerate ! Now you ’ll be 
able to believe me when I tell you the 
rest of the case.” 

“ With this prelude, Mr. Meagles 
went through the narrative, — the estab- 
lished narrative, which has become 
tiresome, — the matter-of-course narra- 
tive which we all know by heart. How, 
after interminable attendance and cor- 
respondence, after infinite impertinen- 
ces, ignorances, and insults, my lords 
made a Minute, number three thousand 
four hundred and seventy-two, allowing 
the culprit to make certain trials of his 
invention at his own expense. How 
the trials were made in the presence of 
a board of six, of whom two ancient 
members were too blind to see it, two 
other ancient members were too deaf 
to hear it, one other ancient member 
was too lame to get near it, and the 
final ancient member was too pig-head- 
ed to look at it. How there were more 
years ; more impertinences, ignorances, 
and insults. How my lords then made a 
Minute, number five thousand one hun- 
dred and three, whereby they resigned 
the business to the Circumlocution 
Office. How the Circumlocution Office, 
in course of time, took up the business 
as if it -were a bran-new thing of yester- 
day, which had never been heard of 
before ; muddled the business, addled 
the business, tossed the business in a 
wet blanket. How the impertinences, 
ignorances, and insults went through 
the multiplication-table. How there 
was a reference of the invention to three 
Barnacles and a Stiltstalking, who knew 
nothing about it ; into whose heads noth- 
ing could be hammered about it ; who 
got bored about it, and reported phys- 
ical impossibilities about it. How the 
Circumlocution Office, in a Minute, 
number eight thousand seven hundred 
and forty, “saw no reason to reverse 
the decision at which my lords had ar- 
rived.” How the Circumlocution Of- 
fice, being reminded that my lords had 
arrived at no decision, shelved the 


7 o 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


business. How there had been a final 
interview with the head of the Circum- 
locution Office that very morning, and 
how the Brazen Head had spoken, and 
had been, upon the whole, and under 
all the circumstances, and looking at it 
from the various points of view, of opin- 
ion that one of two courses was to be 
pursued in respect of the business ; that 
was to say, either to leave it alone for- 
evermore, or to begin it all over again. 

“ Upon which,” said Mr. M eagles, 
“ as a practical man, I then and there, 
in that presence, took Doyce by the 
collar, and told him it was plain to me 
that he was an infamous rascal, and 
treasonable disturber of the government 
peace, and took him away. I brought 
him out at the office door by the collar, 
that the very porter might know I was 
a practical man who appreciated the 
official estimate of such characters ; and 
here we are ! ” 

If that airy young Barnacle had been 
there, he would have frankly told them 
perhaps that the Circumlocution Office 
had achieved its functions. That what 
the Barnacles had to do was to stick on 
to the national ship as long as they could. 
That to trim the ship, lighten the ship, 
clean the ship, would be to knock them 
off ; that they could but be knocked off 
once; and that if the ship went down 
with them yet sticking to it, that was 
the ship’s lookout, and not theirs. 

“ There ! ” said Mr. Meagles, “ now 
you know all about Doyce. Except, 
which I own does not improve my state 
of mind, that even now you don’t hear 
him complain.” 

“ You must have great patience,” said 
Arthur Clennam, looking at him with 
some wonder, — “great forbearance.” 

“ No,” he returned, “ I don’t know 
that I have more than another man.” 

“ By the Lord you have more than I 
have, though ! ” cried Mr. Meagles. 

Doyce smiled, as he said to Clennam, 
“ You see, my experience of these things 
does not begin with myself. It has 
been in my way to know a little about 
them, from time to time. Mine is not 
a particular case. I am not worse used 
than a hundred others who have put 
themselves in the same position, — than 
all the others, I was going to say.” 


“ I don’t know that I should find that 
a consolation, if it were my case ; but I 
am very glad that you do.” 

“ Understand me ! I don’t say,” he 
replied in his steady, planning way, and 
looking into the distance before him as 
if his gray eye were measuring it, “ that 
it ’s recompense for a man’s toil and 
hope ; but it ’s a certain sort of relief 
to know that I might have counted on 
this.” 

He spoke in that quiet, deliberate 
manner, and in that undertone, which 
is often observable in mechanics who 
consider and adjust with great nicety. 
It belonged to him like his suppleness 
of thumb, or his peculiar way of tilting 
up his hat at the back every now and 
then, as if he were contemplating some 
half-finished work of his hand, and 
thinking about it. 

“ Disappointed? ” he went on, as he 
walked between them under the trees. 
“Yes. No doubt I am disappointed. 
Hurt? Yes. No doubt I am hurt. 
That ’s only natural. But what I mean, 
when I say that people who put them- 
selves in the same position are mostly 
used in the same way — ” 

“ In England,” said Mr. Meagles. 

“ Oh ! of course I mean in England. 
When they take their inventions into 
foreign countries, that ’s quite different. 
And that ’s the reason why so many go 
there.” 

Mr. Meagles very hot indeed again. 

“ What I mean is, that however this 
comes to be the regular way of our 
government, it is its regular way. Have 
you ever heard of any projector or in- 
ventor who failed to find it all but in- 
accessible, and whom it did not dis- 
courage and ill-treat?” 

“ I cannot say that I ever have.” 

“ Have you ever known it to be be- 
forehand in the adoption of any useful 
thing? Ever known it to set an ex- 
ample of any useful kind ? ” 

“ I am a good deal older than my 
friend here,” said Mr. Meagles, “and 
I’ll answer that. Never.” 

“ But we all three have known, I ex- 
pect,” said the inventor, “ a pretty many 
cases of its fixed determination to be 
miles upon miles, and years upon years, 
behind the rest of us ; and of its being 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


7 * 


found out persisting in the use of things 
long superseded, even after the better 
things were well known and generally 
taken up ? ” 

They all agreed upon that. 

“ Well then,” said Doyce with a sigh, 
** as I know what such a metal will do 
at such a temperature, and such a body 
under such a pressure, so I may know 
(if I will only consider), how these great 
lords and gentlemen will certainly deal 
with such a matter as mine. I have no 
right to be surprised, with a head upon 
my shoulders, and memory in it, that 
I fall into the ranks with all who came 
before me. I ought to have let it 
alone. I have had warning enough, I 
am sure.” 

With that he put up his spectacle- 
case, and said to Arthur : “ If I don’t 
complain, Mr. Clennam, I can feel grat- 
itude ; and I assure you that I feel it 
towards our mutual friend. Many’s 
the day, and many ’s the way in which 
he has backed me.” 

“ Stuff and nonsense,” said Mr. Mea- 
gles. 

Arthur could not but glance at Daniel 
Doyce in the ensuing silence. Though 
it was evidently in the grain of his 
character, and of his respect for his 
own- case, that he should abstain from 
idle murmuring, it was evident that he 
had grown the older, the sterner, and 
the poorer, for his long endeavor. He 
could not but think what a blessed thing 
it would have been for this man, if he 
had taken a lesson from the gentlemen 
who were so kind as to take the nation’s 
affairs in charge, and had learnt How 
not to do it. 

Mr. Meagles was hot and despondent 
for about five minutes, and then began 
to cool and clear up. 

“ Corne, come ! ” said he. “ We shall 
not make this the better by being grim. 
Where do you think of going, Dan ? ” 

“ I shall go back to the factory,” said 
Dan, 

“ Why then, we ’ll all go back to the 
factory, or walk in that direction,” re- 
turned Meagles, cheerfully. “Mr. 
Clennam won’t be deterred by its being 
in Bleeding Heart Yard.” 

“ Bleeding Heart Yard?” said Clen- 
nam. “ I want to go there.” 


“So much the better,” cried Mr. 
Meagles. “ Come along ! ” 

As they went along, certainly one of 
the party, and probably more than one, 
thought that Bleeding Heart Yard was 
no inappropriate destination for a man 
who had been in official correspondence 
with my lords and the Barnacles, — and 
perhaps had a misgiving also that Bri- 
tannia herself might come to look for 
lodgings in Bleeding Heart Yard, some 
ugly day or other, if she overdid the 
Circumlocution Office. 


CHAPTER XI. 

LET LOOSE. 

A late, dull autumn night was 
closing in upon the river Saone. The 
stream, like a sullied looking-glass in 
a gloomy place, reflected the clouds 
heavily ; and the low banks leaned over 
here and there, as if they were half curi- 
ous, and half afraid, to see their darken- 
ing pictures in the water. The flat ex- 
panse of country about Chalons lay a 
long heavy streak, occasionally made 
a little ragged by a row of poplar-trees, 
against the wrathful sunset. On the 
banks of the river Saone it was wet, 
depressing, solitary ; and the night 
deepened fast. 

One man, slowly moving on towards 
Chalons, was the only visible figure in 
the landscape. Cain might have looked 
as lonely and avoided. With an old 
sheepskin knapsack at his back, and a 
rough, unbarked stick cut out of some 
wood in his hand ; miry, footsore, his. 
shoes and gaiters trodden out, his hair 
and beard untrimmed ; the cloak he 
carried over his shoulder, and the 
clothes he wore, soddened with wet ; 
limping along in pain and difficulty ; he 
looked as if the clouds were hurrying 
from him, as if the wail of the wind 
and the shuddering of the grass were 
directed against him, as if the low, mys- 
terious plashing of the water murmured 
at him, as if the fitful autumn night 
were disturbed by him. 

He glanced here and he glanced 
there, sullenly but shrinkingly ; and 


72 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


sometimes stopped and turned about, 
and looked all round him. Then he 
limped on again, toiling and muttering. 

“ To the Devil with this plain that has 
no end ! To the Devil with these stones 
that cut like knives ! To the Devil with 
this dismal darkness, wrapping itself 
about one with a chill ! I hate you ! ” 

And he would have visited his ha- 
tred upon it all with tjie scowl he threw 
about him, if he could. He trudged a 
little farther ; and, looking into the dis- 
tance before him, stopped again. 

“ I, hungry, thirsty, weary. You, 
imbeciles, where the lights are yonder, 
eating and drinking, and warming your- 
selves at fires ! I wish I had the sack- 
ing of your town : I would repay you, 
my children ! ” 

But the teeth he set at the town, and 
the hand he shook at the town, brought 
the town no nearer ; and the man was 
yet hungrier, and thirstier, and wearier, 
when his feet were on its jagged pave- 
ment, and he stood looking about him. 

There was the hotel with its gateway, 
and its savory smell of cooking ; there 
was the cafe, with its bright windows, 
and its rattling of dominos ; there was 
the dyer’s with its strips of red cloth 
on the door-posts ; there was the silver- 
smith’s, with its ear-rings, and its offer- 
ings for altars ; there was the tobacco 
dealer’s, with its lively group of soldier 
customers coming out pipe in mouth ; 
there were the bad odors of the town, 
and the rain and the refuse in the ken- 
nels, and the faint lamps slung across 
the road, and the huge diligence, and 
its mountain of luggage, and its six 
gray horses with their tails tied up, 
getting under way at the coach-office. 
But no small cabaret for a straitened 
traveller being within sight, he had to 
seek one round the dark corner, where 
the cabbage-leaves lay thickest, trodden 
about the public cistern at which wo- 
men had not yet left off drawing water. 
There, in the back street, he found one, 
the Break of Day. The curtained win- 
dows clouded the Break of Day, but 
it seemed light and warm, and it an- 
nounced in legible inscriptions, with 
appropriate pictorial embellishment of 
billiard cue and ball, that at the Break 
of Day one could play billiards ; that 


there one could find meat, drink, and 
lodging, whether one came on horse- 
back or came on ►foot ; and that it kept 
good wines, liquors, and brandy. The 
man turned the handle of the Break of 
Day door, and limped in. 

He touched his discolored, slouched 
hat, as he came in at the door, to a 
few men who occupied the room. Two 
were playing dominos at one of the 
little tables ; three or four were seated 
round the stove, conversing as they 
smoked ; the billiard-table in the cen- 
tre was left alone for the time ; the land- 
lady of the Daybreak sat behind her 
little counter among her cloudy bottles 
of syrups, baskets of cakes, and leaden 
drainage for glasses, working at her 
needle. 

Making his way to an empty little 
table, in a corner of the room behind 
the stove, he put down his knapsack 
and his cloak upon the ground. As he 
raised his head from stooping to do so, 
he found the landlady beside him. 

“ One can lodge here to-night, ma- 
dame ? ” 

“ Perfectly ! ” said the landlady, in a 
high, sing-song, cheery voice. 

“ Good. One can dine — sup — what 
you please to call it ? ” 

“Ah, perfectly ! ” cried the landlady, 
as before. 

“Despatch then, madame, if you 
please. Something to eat, as quickly as 
you can : and some wine at once. I am 
exhausted.” 

“ It is very bad weather, monsieur,” 
said the landlady. 

“ Cursed weather.” 

“ And a very long road.” 

“ A cursed road.” 

His hoarse voice failed him, and he 
rested his head upon his hands until a 
bottle of wine was brought from the 
counter. Having filled and emptied 
his little tumbler twice, and having 
broken off an end from the great loaf 
that was set before him with his cloth 
and napkin, soup-plate, salt, pepper, 
and oil, he rested his back against the 
corner of the wall, made a couch of the 
bench on which he sat, and began to 
chew crust until such time as his repast 
should be ready. 

There had been that momentary in- 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


73 


terruption of the talk about the stove, 
and that temporary inattention to and 
distraction from one another, which is 
usually inseparable in such a company 
from the arrival of a stranger. It had 
assed over by this time ; and the men 
ad done glancing at him, and were 
talking again. 

“ That ’s the true reason,” said one 
of them, bringing a story he had been 
telling to a close, — “that’s the true 
reason why they said that the Devil was 
let loose.” The speaker was the tall 
Swiss belonging to the Church, and he 
brought something of the authority 
of the Church into the discussion, — 
especially as the Devil was in question. 

The landlady, having given her di- 
rections for the new guest’s entertain- 
ment to her husband, who acted as 
cook to the Break of Day, had resumed 
her needle-work behind her counter. 
She was a smart, neat, bright little wo- 
man, with a good deal of cap and a 
good deal of stocking, and she struck 
into the conversation with several 
laughing nods of her head, but without 
looking up from her work. 

“ Ah Heaven, then,” said she. 
“When the boat came up from Lyons, 
and brought the news that the Devil 
was actually let loose at Marseilles, 
some fly-catchers swallowed it. But 
I? No, not I.” 

“ Madame, you are always right,” 
returned the tall Swiss. “ Doubtless 
you were enraged against that man, 
m'adame ? ” 

“ Ah yes, then ! ” cried the landlady, 
raising her eyes from her work, opening 
them very wide, and tossing her head 
on one side. “ Naturally, yes.” 

“ He was a bad subject.” 

“ He was a wicked wr&tch,” said the 
landlady, “and well merited what he 
had the good fortune to escape. So 
much the worse.” 

“Stay, madame ! Let us see,” re- 
turned the Swiss, argumentatively turn- 
ing his cigar between his lips. “It 
may have been his unfortunate destiny. 
He may have been the child of circum- 
stances. It is always possible that he 
had, and has, good in him if one did 
but know how to find it out. Philo- 
sophical philanthropy teaches — ” 


The rest of the little knot about the 
stove murmured an objection to the 
introduction of that threatening expres- 
sion. Even the two players at domi- 
nos glanced up from their game, as. if. 
to protest against philosophical philan- 
thropy being brought by name into the 
Break of Day. 

“ Hold there, you and you^ philan- 
thropy,” cried the smiling landlady, 
nodding her head more than ever. 

“ Listen, then. I am a woman, I. I 
know nothing of philosophical philan- 
thropy. But I know what I have seen, 
and what I have looked in the'- face, 
in this world here, where I find myself. 
And I tell you this, my friend, that 
there are people (men and women both, 
unfortunately) who have no good in 
them, — none. That there are people- 
whom it is necessary to detest without 
compromise. That there are people 
who must be dealt with as enemies of 
the human race. That there are peo- 
ple who have no human heart, and who 
must be crushed like savage beasts and 
cleared out of the way. They are but 
few, I hope ; but I have seen (in this 
world here, where I find myself, aqd even 
at the little Break of Day) that these 
are such people. And 1 do not doubt 
that this man, — whatever they call him, 

I forget his name — is one of them.” 

The landlady’s lively speech was re- 
ceived with greater favor at the Break 
of Day than it would have elicited from 
certain amiable whitewashers of the 
class she so unreasonably objected to,' 
nearer Great Britain. 

“ My faith ! If your philosophical 
philanthropy,” said the landlady, put- 
ting down her work, and rising to take 
the stranger’s soup from her husband, 
who appeared with it at a side door, 
“ puts anybody at the mercy of such 
people by holding terms with them at 
all, in words or deeds, or both, take it 
away from the Break of Day, for it 
isn’t worth a sou.” 

As she placed the soup before the 
guest, who changed his attitude to a 
sitting one, he looked her full in the 
face, and his mustache went up under 
his nose, and his nose came down over 
his mustache. 

“ Well ! ” said the previous speaker, 


74 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


“let us come back to our subject. 
Leaving all that aside, gentlemen, it 
was because the man was acquitted on 
his trial, that people said at Marseilles 
that the Devil was let loose. That was 
how the phrase began to circulate, and 
what it meant ; nothing more.” 

“ How do they call him ? ” said the 
landlady. “ Biraud, is it not ? ” 

“ Rigaud, madame,” returned the 
tall Swiss. 

“ Rigaud ! To be sure ! ” 

The traveller’s soup was succeeded by 
a dish of meat, and that by a dish of 
vegetables. He ate all that was placed 
before him, emptied his bottle of wine, 
called for a glass of rum, and smoked 
his cigarette with his cup of coffee. As 
he became refreshed, he became over- 
bearing ; and patronized the company 
at the Daybreak in certain small talk, 
at which he assisted, as if his condi- 
tion were far above his appearance. 

. The company might have had other 
engagements, or they might have felt 
their inferiority, but in any case they 
dispersed by degrees, and, not being re- 
placed by other company, left their new 
patroa in possession of the Break of 
Day. The landlord was clinking about 
in his kitchen ; the landlady was quiet 
at her work ; and the refreshed travel- 
ler sat smoking by the stove, warming 
his ragged feet. 

“ Pardon me, madame, — that Bi- 
raud— ” 

“Rigaud, monsieur.” 

“ Rigaud. Pardon me again, — has 
contracted your displeasure, how?” 

The landlady, who had been at one 
moment thinking within herself that 
this was a handsome man, at another 
moment that this was an ill-looking man, 
observed the nose coming down and 
the mustache going up, and strongly 
inclined to the latter decision. Rigaud 
was a criminal, she said, who had killed 
his wife. 

“ Ay, ay ? Death of my life, that ’s a 
criminal indeed. But how do you know 
it ? ” 

“ All the world knows it.” 

“ Hah ! And yet he escaped jus- 
tice ? ” 

“ Monsieur, the law could not prove 
it against him to its satisfaction. So the 


law says. Nevertheless, all the world 
knows he did it. The people knew it 
so well that they tried to tear him to 
pieces.” 

“ Being all in perfect accord with 
their own wives?” said the guest. 
“ Haha! ” 

The landlady of the Break of Day 
looked at him again, and felt almost 
confirmed in her last decision. He had 
a fine hand, though, and he turned it 
with a great show. She began once 
more to think that he was not ill-look- 
ing after all. 

“ Did you mention, madame, — or 
was it mentioned among the gentlemen, 
— what became of him ? ” 

The landlady shook her head, it be- 
ing the first conversational stage at 
which her vivacious earnestness had 
ceased to nod it, keeping time to what 
she said. It had been mentioned at 
the Daybreak, she remarked, on the au- 
thority of the journals, that he had been 
kept in prison for his own safety. How- 
ever that might be, he had escaped his 
deserts, so much the worse. 

The guest sat looking at her as he 
smoked out his final cigarette, and as 
she sat with her head bent over her 
work, with an expression that might 
have resolved her doubts, and brought 
her to a lasting conclusion on the sub- 
ject of his good or bad looks if she had 
seen it. When she did look up, the 
expression was not there. The hand 
was smoothing his shaggy mustache. 

“ May one ask to be shown to bed, 
madame ? ” 

Very willingly, monsieur. Hola, my 
husband ! My husband would conduct 
him up stairs. There was one travel- 
ler there, asleep, who had gone to bed 
very early indeed, being overpowered by 
fatigue; but it was a large chamber with 
two beds in it, and space enough for 
twenty. This the landlady of the Break 
of Day chirpingly explained, calling be- 
tween whiles, Hola, my husband ! out 
at the side door. 

My husband answered at length, “It 
is I, my wife ! ” and presenting himself 
in his cook’s cap, lighted the traveller 
up a steep and narrow staircase ; the 
traveller carrying his own cloak and 
knapsack, and bidding the landlady 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


75 


good night with a complimentary refer- 
ence to the pleasure of seeing her again 
to-morrow. It was a large room, with 
a rough splintery floor, unplastered raf- 
ters overhead, and two bedsteads on 
opposite sides. Here my husband put 
down the candle he carried, and with a 
sidelong look at his guest stooping over 
his knapsack, gruffly gave him the in- 
struction, “ The bed to the right ! ” 
and left him to his repose. The land- 
lord, whether he was a good or a bad 
physiognomist, had fully made up his 
mind that the guest was an ill-looking 
fellow. 

The guest looked contemptuously at 
the clean coarse bedding prepared for 
him, and, sitting down on the rush 
chair at the bedside, drew his money 
out of his pocket, and told it over in 
his hand. “One must eat,” he mut- 
tered to himself; “but by Heaven I 
must eat at the cost of some other man 
to-morrow ! ” 

As he sat pondering, and mechan- 
ically weighing his. money in his palm, 
the deep breathing of the traveller in the 
other bed fell so regularly upon his 
hearing that it attracted his eyes in that 
direction. The man was covered up 
warm, and had drawn the white curtain 
at his head, so that he could be only 
heard, not seen. But the deep, regular 
breathing, still going on while the other 
was taking off his worn shoes and gait- 
ers, and still continuing when he had 
laid aside his coat and cravat, became 
at length a strong provocatiye to curios- 
ity, and incentive to get a glimpse of the 
sleeper’s face. 

The waking traveller, therefore, stole 
a little nearer, and yet a little nearer, 
and a little nearer, to the sleeping trav- 
eller’s bed, until he stood close beside 
it. Even then he could not see his face, 
for he had drawn the sheet over'it. The 
regular breathing still continuing, he 
put his smooth white hand (such a 
treacherous hand it looked, as it went 
creeping from him !) to the sheet, and 
gently lifted it away. 

“ Death of my soul ! ” he whispered, 
falling back, “ here ’s Cavalletto ! ” 

Thelittle Italian, previously influenced 
in his sleep perhaps by the stealthy 
presence at his bedside, stopped in his 


regular breathing, and with a long, deep 
respiration opened his eyes. At first 
they were not awake, though open. He 
lay for some seconds looking placidly at 
his old prison companion, and then, all 
at once, with a cry of surprise and alarm, 
sprang out of bed. 

“ Hush ! What ’s the matter ! Keep ' 
quiet ! It ’s I. You know me?” cried 
the other, in a suppressed voice. 

But John Baptist, widely staring, 
muttering a number of invocations aivd 
ejaculations, tremblingly backing into a 
corner, slipping on his trousers,, and 
tying his coat by the two sleeves round 
his neck, manifested an unmistakable 
desire to escape by the door rather than 
renew the acquaintance. Seeing this, 
his old prison comrade fell back upon 
the door and set his shoulders against it. 

“Cavalletto ! Wake, boy ! Rub 
your eyes and look at me. Not the 
name you used to call me, — don’t use 
that, — Lagnier, say Lagnier 1 ” 

John Baptist, staring at him with eyes 
opened to their utmost width, made a 
number of those .national, back-handed 
shakes of the right forefinger in the air, 
as if he were resolved on negativing be- 
forehand everything that the other could 
possibly advance during the whole term 
of his life. 

“ Cavalletto ! Give me your hand. 
You know' Lagnier the gentleman. 
Touch the hand of a gentleman ! ” 

Submitting himself to the old tone of 
condescending authority, John Baptist, 
not at all steady on his legs as yet, ad- 
vanced and put his hand in his patron’s. 
Monsieur Lagnier laughed ; and, having 
given it a squeeze, tossed it up and let 
it go. 

“Then you were — ” faltered John 
Baptist. 

“Not shaved? No. See here!” 
cried Lagnier, giving his head a twirl, 

“ as tight on as your own.” 

John Baptist, with a slight shiver, 
looked all round the room as if to recall 
where he was. His patron took that 
opportunity of turning the key in the 
door, and then sat down upon his bed. 

“ Look ! ” he said, holding up his 
shoes and gaiters. “ That ’s a poor 
trim for a gentleman, you’ll say. No. 
matter, you shall see how soon I’ll 


76 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


mend it. Come and sit down. Take 
your old place ! ” 

John Baptist, looking anything but 
reassured, sat down on the floor at the 
bedside, keeping his eyes upon his pa- 
tron all the time. 

“That’s well !” cried Lagnier. “ Now 
we might be in the old infernal hole 
again, hey ? How long have you been 
out ?” 

“ Two days after you, my master.” 

“ How do you come here ? ” 

“ I was cautioned not to stay there, 
and so I left the town at once, and 
since then I have changed about. I 
have been doing odds and ends at 
Avignon, at Pont Esprit, at Lyons ; 
upon the Rhone, upon the Saone.” As 
he spoke, he rapidly mapped the places 
out with his sunburnt hand on the 
floor. ' 

“ And where are you going ? ” 

“ Going, my master? ” 

“Ay!” 

John Baptist seemed to desire to 
evade the question, without knowing 
how. “ By Bacchus ! ” he said at last, 
as if he were forced to the admission, 
“ I have sometimes had a thought of 
going to Paris, and perhaps to Eng- 
land.” 

“Cavalletto. This is in confidence. 
I also am going to Paris, and perhaps 
to England. We ’ll go together.” 

The little man nodded his head, and 
showed his teeth ; and yet seemed not 
cjuite convinced that it was a surpass- 
ingly desirable arrangement. 

“We’ll go together,” repeated 
Lagnier. “You shall see how soon I 
will force myself to be recognized as a 
gentleman, and you shall profit by it. 
Is it agreed? Are we one?” 

“ O, surely, surely ! ” said the little 
man. 

“ Then you shall hear before I sleep 
— and in six words, for I want sleep — 
how I appear before you, I, Lagnier. 
Remember that. Not the other.” 

“ Altro, altro ! Not Ri — ” Before 
John Baptist could finish the name, his 
comrade had got his hand under his 
chin and fiercely shut up his mouth. 

“Death! what are you doing? Do 
you want me to be trampled upon and 
stoned? Do you want to be trampled 


upon and stoned? You would be. 
You don’t imagine that they would set 
upon me, and let my prison chum go ? 
Don’t think it ! ” 

There was an expression in his face 
as he released his grip of his friend’s 
Jaw, from which his friend inferred, that 
if the course of events really came to 
any stoning and trampling, Monsieur 
Lagnier would so distinguish him with 
his notice as to insure his having his 
full share of it. He remembered what 
a cosmopolitan gentleman Monsieur 
Lagnier was, and how few weak distinc- 
tions he made. 

“I am a man,” said Monsieur 
Lagnier, “ whom society has deeply 
wronged since you last saw me. You 
know that I am sensitive and brave, and 
that it is my character to govern. How 
has society respected those qualities in 
me ? I have been shrieked at through the 
streets. I have been guarded through 
the streets against men, and especially 
women, running at me armed with any 
weapons they could lay their hands on. 
I have lain in prison for security, with 
the place of my confinement kept a se- 
cret, lest I should be tom out of it and 
felled by a hundred blows. I have been 
carted out of Marseilles in the dead of 
night, and carried leagues away from it 
packed in straw. It has not been safe 
for me to go near my house ; and, with 
a beggar’s pittance in my pocket, I 
have walked through vile mud and 
weather ever since, until my feet are 
crippled, — look at them ! Such are the 
humiliations that society has inflicted 
upon me, possessing the qualities I 
have mentioned, and which you know 
me to possess. But society shall pay 
for it.” 

All this he said in his companion’s 
ear, and with his hand before his lips. 

“ Even here,” he went on in the same 
way, “even in this mean drinking-shop, 
society pursues me. Madame defames 
me, and her guests defame me. I, too, 
a gentleman with manners and accom- 
plishments to strike them dead ! But 
the wrongs society has heaped upon me 
are treasured in this breast.” 

To all of which John Baptist, listen- 
ing attentively to the suppressed hoarse 
voice, said from time to time, “ Surely, 


LITTLE DORRIT 


77 


surely ! ” tossing his head and shutting 
his eyes, as if there were the dearest 
case against society that perfect candor 
could make out. 

“Put my shoes there,” continued 
Lagnier. “ Hang my cloak to dry there 
by the door. Take my hat.” He obeyed 
each instruction as it was given. “And 
this is the bed to which society consigns 
me, is it? Hah. Very well ! ” 

As he stretched out his length upon 
it, with a ragged handkerchief bound 
round his wicked head, and only his 
wicked head showing above the bed- 
clothes, John Baptist was rather strong- 
ly reminded of what had so very nearly 
happened to prevent the mustache from 
any more going up as it did, and the 
nose from any more coming down as 
it did. 

“ Shaken out of destiny’s dice-box 
again into your company, eh ? By 
Heaven ! So much the better for you. 
You ’ll profit by it. I shall need a 
long rest. Let me sleep in the morn- 
ing.” 

John Baptist replied that he should 
sleep as long as he would, and, wishing 
him a happy night, put out the candle. 
One might have supposed that the next 
proceeding of the Italian would have 
been to undress ; but he did exactly the 
reverse, and dressed himself from head 
to foot, saving his shoes. When he had 
so done, he lay down upon his bed with 
some of its coverings over him, and his 
coat still tied round his neck, to get 
through the night. 

When he started up, the Godfather 
Break of Day was peeping at its name- 
sake. He rose, took his shoes in his 
hand, turned the key in the door with 
great caution, and crept down stairs. 
Nothing was astir there but the smell 
of coffee, wine, tobacco, and syrups ; 
and madame’s little counter looted 
ghastly enough. But he had paid 
madame his little note at it overnight, 
and wanted to see nobody, — wanted 
nothing but to get on his shoes and 
his knapsack, open the door, and run 
away. 

He prospered in his object. No 
movement or voice was heard when he 
opened the door ; no wicked head tied 
up in a ragged handkerchief looked out 


of the upper window. When the sun 
had raised his full disk above the flat 
line of the horizon, and was striking 
fire out of the long muddy vista of paved 
road with its weary avenue of little 
trees, a black speck moved along the 
road and splashed among the flaming 
pools of rain-water, which black speck 
was John Baptist Cavalletto, running 
away from his patron. 


CHAPTER XII. 

BLEEDING HEART YARD. 

In London itself, though in the old 
rustic road towards a suburb of note 
where in the days of William Shake- 
speare, author and stage-player, there 
were Royal hunting-seats, howbeit no 
sport is left there now but for hunters of 
men, Bleeding Heart Yard was to be 
found. A place much changed in fea- 
ture and in fortune, yet with some relish 
of ancient greatness about it. Two or 
three mighty stacks of chimneys, and a 
few large dark rooms which had escaped 
being walled and subdivided out of 
the recognition of their old proportions, 
gave the Yard a character. It was in- 
habited by poor people, who set up 
their rest among its faded glories, as 
Arabs of the desert pitch their tents 
among the fallen stones of the Pyra- 
mids ; but there was a family sentimen- 
tal feeling, prevalent in the Yard, that it 
had a character. 

As if the aspiring city had become 
puffed up in the very ground^ on which 
it stood, the ground had so risen about 
Bleeding Heart Yard that you got into 
it down a flight of steps which formed 
no part of the original approach, and 
got out of it by a low gateway into a 
maze of shabby streets, which went 
about and about, tortuously ascending to 
the level again. At this end of the Yard 
and over the gateway was the factory of 
Daniel Doyce, often heavily beating 
like a bleeding heart of iron, with the 
clink of metal upon metal. 

The opinion of the Yard was divided 
respecting the derivation of its name. 
The more practical of its inmates abid- 


73 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


ed by the tradition of a murder; the 
gentler and more imaginative inhab- 
itants, including the whole of the tender 
sex, were loyal to the legend of a young 
lady of former times closely imprisoned 
in her chamber by a cruel father for re- 
maining true to her own true love, and 
refusing to marry the suitor he chose 
for her. The legend related how that 
the young lady used to be seen up at 
her window behind the bars, murmur- 
ing a love-lorn song, of which the bur- 
den was, “ Bleeding Heart, Bleeding 
Heart, bleeding away,” until she died. 
It was objected by the murderous party 
that this refrain was notoriously the in- 
vention of a tambour-worker, a spinster 
and romantic, still lodging in the Yard. 
But forasmuch as all favorite legends 
must be associated with the affections, 
and as many more people fall in love 
than commit murder, — which it may 
be hoped, howsoever bad we are, will 
continue until the end of the world to 
be the dispensation under which we 
shall live, — the Bleeding Heart, Bleed- 
ing Heart, bleeding away story, carried 
the day by a great majority. Neither 
party would listen to the antiquaries who 
delivered learned lectures in the neigh- 
borhood, showing the Bleeding Heart 
to have been the heraldic cognizance 
of the old family to whom the property 
had once belonged. And considering 
that the hour-glass they turned from 
year to year was filled with the earthiest 
and coarsest sand, the Bleeding Heart 
Yarders had reason enough for object- 
ing to be despoiled of the one little 
golden grain of poetry that sparkled in 
it. 

Down into the Yard, by way of the 
steps, came Daniel Doyce, Mr. Mea- 
gles, and Clennam. Passing along the 
Yard, and between the open doors on 
either hand, all abundantly garnished 
with light children nursing heavy ones, 
they arrived at its opposite boundary, 
the gateway. Here Arthur Clennam 
stopped to look about him for the domi- 
cile of Plornish, plasterer ; whose name, 
according to the custom of Londoners, 
Daniel Doyce had never seen or heard 
of to that hour. 

It was plain enough, nevertheless, as 
Little Dorrit had said, over a lime- 


splashed gateway in the comer, within 
which Plornish kept a ladder and a 
barrel or two. The last house in Bleed- 
ing Heart Yard, which she had de- 
scribed as his place of habitation, was a 
large house, let off to various tenants ; 
but Plornish ingeniously hinted that -he 
lived in the parlor, by means of a paint- 
ed hand under his name, the forefinger 
of which hand (on which the artist had 
depicted a ring and a most elaborate 
nail of the genteelest form), referred all 
inquirers to that apartment. 

Parting from his companions, after 
arranging another meeting with Mr. 
Meagles, Clennam went alone into the 
entry, and knocked with his knuckles 
at the parlor door. It was opened 
presently by a woman with a child in 
her arms, whose unoccupied hand was 
hastily rearranging the upper part of 
her dress. This was Mrs. Plornish, 
and this maternal action was the action 
of Mrs. Plornish during a large part of 
her waking existence. 

Was Mr. Plornish at home ? “ Well, 
sir,” said Mrs. Plornish, a civil woman, 
“ not to deceive you, he ’s gone to look 
for a job.” 

Not to deceive you, was a method of 
speech with Mrs. Plornish. She would 
deceive you, under any circumstances, 
as little as might be ; but she had a 
trick of answering in this provisional 
form. 

“ Do you think he will be back soon, 
if I wait for him? ” 

“ I have been expecting him,” said 
Mrs. Plornish, ‘‘this half an hour, at 
any minute of time. Walk in, sir.” 

Arthur entered the rather dark and 
close parlor (though it was lofty too), 
and sat down in the chair she placed 
for him. 

“Not to deceive you, sir, I notice 
it,” said Mrs. Plornish, “ and I take it 
kind of you.” 

He was at a loss to understand 
what she meant ; and, by expressing 
as much in his looks, elicited her ex- 
planation. 

“ It ain’t many that comes into a poor 
place that deems it worth their while 
to move their hats,” said Mrs. Plor- 
nish. “ But people think more of it 
than people think.” 


Little dorrit. 


79 


Clennam returned, with an uncom- 
fortable feeling in so very slight a cour- 
tesy being unusual, Was that all ! And 
stooping down to pinch the cheek of 
another young child, who was sitting on 
the floor staring at him, asked Mrs. 
Plornish how old that fine boy was? 

“Four year just turned, sir,” said 
Mrs. Plornish. “ He is a fine little 
fellow, ain’t he, sir? But this one is 
rather sickly.” She tenderly hushed 
the baby in her arms, as she said it. 
“You wouldn’t mind my asking if it 
happened to be a job as you was come 
about, sir, would you?” added Mrs. 
Plornish, wistfully. 

She asked it so anxiously, that if he 
had been in possession of any kind of 
tenement, he would have had it plas- 
tered a foot deep, rather than answer 
No. But he was obliged to answer 
No ; and he saw a shade of disappoint- 
ment on her face, as she checked a 
sigh and looked at the low fire. Then 
he saw, also, that Mrs. Plornish was a 
young woman, made somewhat slat- 
ternly in herself and her belongings by 
poverty ; and so dragged at by poverty 
and the children together, that their 
united forces had already dragged her 
face into wrinkles. 

“All such things as jobs,” said Mrs. 
Plornish, “ seems to me to have gone 
underground, they do indeed.” (Here- 
in Mrs. Plornish limited her remark to 
the plastering trade, and spoke without 
reference to the Circumlocution Office 
and the Barnacle family.) 

“Is it so difficult to get work?” 
asked Arthur Clennam. 

“ Plornish finds it so,” she returned. 
“ He is quite unfortunate. Really he 
is.” 

Really he was. He was one of those 
many wayfarers on the road of life, who 
seem to be afflicted with supernatural 
corns, rendering it impossible for them 
to keep up even with their lame com- 
petitors. A willing, working, soft- 
hearted, not hard-headed fellow, Plor- 
nish took his fortune as smoothly as 
could be expected ; but it was a rough 
one. It so rarely happened that any- 
body seemed to want him, it was such 
an exceptional case when his powers 
were in any request, that his misty 


mind could not make out how it hap- 
-pened. He took it as it came, there- 
fore ; he tumbled into all kinds of diffi- 
culties, and tumbled out of them ; and, 
by tumbling through life, got himself 
considerably bruised. 

“ It ’s not for want of looking after 
jobs, I am sure,” said Mrs. Plornish, 
lifting up her eyebrows, and searching 
for a solution of the problem between 
the bars of the grate; “nor yet for 
want of working at them, when they 
are to be got. No one ever heard my 
husband complain of work.” 

Somehow or other, this was the gen- 
eral misfortune of Bleeding Heart Yard. 
From time to time there were public 
complaints, pathetically going about, 
of labor being scarce, — which certain 
people seemed to take extraordinarily 
ill, as though they had an absolute 
right to it on their own terms, — but 
Bleeding Heart Yard, though as willing 
a Yard as any in Britain, was never the 
better for the demand. That high old 
family, the Barnacles, had long been 
too busy with their great principle to 
look into the matter ; and indeed the 
matter had nothing to do with their 
watchfulness in outgeneraling all other 
high old families except the Stiltstalk- 
ings. 

While Mrs. Plornish spoke in these 
words of her absent lord, her lord re- 
turned. A smooth-cheeked, fresh-col- 
ored, sandy-whiskered man of thirty. 
Long in the legs, yielding at the knees, 
foolish in the face, flannel-jacketed, 
lime-whitened. 

“ This is Plornish, sir.” 

“ I came,” said Clennam, rising, “to 
beg the favor of a little conversation 
with you on the subject of the Dorrit 
family.” 

Plornish became suspicious. Seemed 
to scent a creditor. Said, “ Ah, Yes. 
Well. He did n’t know what satisfac- 
tion he could give any gentleman re- 
specting that family. What might it 
be about, now?” 

“ I know you better,” said Clennam, 
smiling, “ than you suppose.” 

Plornish observed, not smiling in re- 
turn, And yet he hadn’t the pleasure 
of being acquainted with the gentle- 
man, neither. 


8o 


LITTLE DORR IT. 


“ No,” said Arthur, “ I know of 
your kind offices at second hand, but 
on the best authority. Through Little 
Dorrit. — I mean,” he explained, 
“ Miss Dorrit.” 

“Mr. Clennam, is it? Oh! I’ve 
heard of you, sir.” 

“And I of you,” said Arthur. 

“ Please to sit down again, sir, and 
consider yourself welcome. — Why, 
yes,” said Plornish, taking a chair, and 
lifting the elder child upon his knee, 
that he might have the moral support 
of speaking to a stranger over his head, 
“ I have been on the wrong side of the 
Lock myself, and in that way we come 
to know Miss Dorrit. Me and my wife, 
we are well acquainted with Miss Dor- 
rit.” 

“ Intimate ! n cried Mrs. Plornish. 
Indeed, she was so proud of the ac- 
quaintance, that she had awakened 
some bitterness of spirit in the Yard 
by magnifying to an enormous amount 
the sum for which Miss Dorrit’s father 
had become insolvent. The Bleeding 
Hearts resented her claiming to know 
people of such distinction. 

“It was her father that I got ac- 
quainted with first. And through get- 
ting acquainted with him, you see, — 
why — I got acquainted with her,” said 
Plornish, tautologically. 

“ I see.” 

“ Ah ! And there ’s manners ! 
There ’s polish ! There ’s a gentleman 
to have run to seed in the Marshalsea 
jail ! Why, perhaps you are not aware,” 
said Plornish, lowering his voice and 
speaking with a perverse admiration of 
what he ought to have pitied or de- 
spised, — “ not aware that Miss Dorrit 
and her sister dursn’t let hiiji know 
that they work for a living. No ! ” said 
Plornish, looking with a ridiculous tri- 
umph first at his wife, and then all 
round the room. “ Dursn’t let him 
know it, they dursn’t ! ” 

“ Without admiring him for that,” 
Clennam quietly observed, “ I am very 
sorry for him.” The remark appeared 
to suggest to Plornish, for the first time, 
that it might not be a very fine trait 
of character after all. He pondered 
about it for a moment, and gave it 
up. 


“As to me,” he resumed, “certainly 
Mr. Dorrit is as affable with me, I am 
sure, as I can possibly expect. Consid- 
ering the differences and distances be- 
twixt us, more so. But it ’s Miss Dor- 
rit that we were speaking of.” 

“ True. Pray how did you introduce 
her at my mother’s ? ” 

Mr. Plornish picked a bit of lime out 
of his whisker, put it between his lips, 
turned it with his tongue like a sugar- 
plum, considered, found himself un- 
equal to the task of lucid explanation, 
and appealing to his wife, said, “ Sally, 
you may as well mention how it was, 
old woman.” 

“ Miss Dorrit,” said Sally, hushing 
the baby from side to side, and laying 
her chin upon the little hand as it tried 
to disarrange the gown again, “ came 
here one afternoon with a bit of writing, 
telling that how she wished for needle- 
work, and asked if it would be consid- 
ered any ill-conwenience in case she 
was to give her address here.” (Plor- 
nish repeated, her address here, in a 
low voice, as if he were making re- 
sponses at church.) “ Me and Plor- 
nish says, No, Miss Dorrit, no ill-con- 
wenience,” (Plornish repeated, no ill- 
conwenience.) “ and she wrote it in, ac- 
cording. Which then me and Plornish 
says, Ho, Miss Dorrit ! ” (Plornish re- 
peated, Ho, Miss Dorrit.) “ Have 
you thought of copying it three or four 
times, as the way to make it known in 
more places than one? No, says Miss 
Dorrit, I have not, but I will. She 
copied it out according, on this table, 
in a sweet writing, and Plornish, he 
took it where he worked, having a job 
just then,” (Plornish repeated, job just 
then,) “ and likeways to the landlord 
of the Yard ; through which it was that 
Mrs. Clennam first happened to employ 
Miss Dorrit.” Plornish repeated, em- 
ploy Miss Dorrit ; and Mrs. Plornish, 
having come to an end, feigned to bite 
the fingers of the little hand as she 
kissed it. 

“The landlord of the Yard,” said 
Arthur Clennam, “is — ” 

“ He is Mr. Casby, by name, he is,” 
said Plornish, “ and Pancks, he collects 
the rents. That,” added Mr. Plornish, 
dwelling on the subject, with a slow 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


81 


thoughtfulness that appeared to have 
no connection with any specific object, 
and to lead him nowhere, — “that is 
about what they are, you may believe 
me or not, as you think proper.” 

“ Ay ? ” returned Clennam, thought- 
ful in his turn. “ Mr. Casby, too ! 
An old acquaintance of mine, long 
ago ! ” 

Mr. Plornish did not see his road to 
any comment on this fact, and made 
none. As there truly was no reason 
why he should have the least interest in 
it, Arthur Clennam went on to the pres- 
ent purport of his visit ; namely, to 
make Plornish the instrument of effect- 
ing Tip’s release, with as little detri- 
ment as possible to the self-reliance and 
self-helpfulness of the young man, sup- 
posing him to possess any remnant of 
those qualities, — without doubt a very 
wide stretch of supposition. Plornish, 
having been made acquainted with the 
cause of action from the Defendant’s 
own mouth, gave Arthur to understand 
that the Plaintiff was “a Chaunter ” — 
meaning, not a singer of anthems, but 
a seller of horses, — and that he (Plor- 
nish) considered that ten shillings in the 
pound “would settle handsome,” and 
that more would be a waste of money. 
The Principal and instrument soon 
drove off together to a stable-yard in 
High Holbom, where a remarkably fine 
gray gelding, worth, at the lowest fig- 
ure, seventy-five guineas (not taking in- 
to account the value of the shot he had 
been made to swallow for the improve- 
ment of his form), was to be parted 
with for a twenty-pound note, in conse- 
quence of his having run away last 
week with Mrs. Captain Barbary of 
Cheltenham, who was n’t up to a horse 
of his courage, and who, in mere spite, 
insisted on selling him for that ridicu- 
lous sum : or, in other words, on giving 
him away. Plornish, going up this 
yard alone and leaving his Principal 
outside, found a gentleman with tight 
drab legs, a rather old hat, a little 
hooked stick, and a blue neckerchief 
(Captain Maroon of Gloucestershire, a 
private friend of Captain Barbary) ; 
who happened to be there, in a friendly 
way, to mention these little circum- 
stances concerning the remarkably fine 

6 


gray gelding to any real judge of a 
horse and quick snapper-up of a good 
thing, who might look in at that ad- 
dress as per advertisement. This gen- 
tleman, happening also to be the Plain- 
tiff in the Tip case, referred Mr. Plor- 
nish to his solicitor, and declined to 
treat with Mr. Plornish, or even to en- 
dure his presence in the yard, unless 
he appeared there with a twenty-pound 
note; in which case only, the gentle- 
man would augur from appearances that 
he meant business, and might be in- 
duced to talk to him. On this hint, 
Mr. Plornish retired to communicate 
with his Principal, and presently came 
back with the required credentials. 
Then said Captain Maroon, “ Now, 
how much time do you want to make 
up the other twenty in ? Now, I ’ll 
give you a month.” Then said Cap- 
tain Maroon, when that would n’t suit, 
“ Now, I ’ll tell you what I ’ll do with 
you. You shall get me a good bill at 
four months, made payable at a bank- 
ing house, for the other twenty ! ” 
Then said Captain Maroon, when that 
would n’t suit, “ Now, come! Here’s 
the last I ’ve got to say to you. You 
shall give me another ten down, and I ’ll 
run my pen clean through it.” Then 
said Captain Maroon, when that would 
n’t suit, “ Now, I ’ll tell you what it 
is, and this shuts it up ; he has used me 
bad, but I ’ll let him off for another five 
down and a bottle of wine ; and if you 
mean done, say done, and if you don’t 
like it, leave it.” Finally said Captain 
Maroon, when that wouldn’t suit ei- 
ther, “Hand over, then!” — And in 
consideration of the first offer, gave a 
receipt in full and discharged the pris- 
oner. 

“Mr. Plornish,” said Arthur, “I 
trust to you, if you please, to keep my 
secret. If you will undertake to let the 
young man know that he is free, and to 
tell him that you were employed to 
compound for the debt by some one 
whom you are not at liberty to name, 
ou will not only do me a service, 
ut may do him one, and his sister 
also.” 

“ The last reason, sir,” said Plornish, 
“ would be quite sufficient. Your wish- 
es shall be attended to.” 


82 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


“ A friend has obtained his discharge, 
you can say, if you please. A friend 
who hopes that for his sister’s sake, if 
for no one else’s, he will make good use 
of his liberty.” 

“Your wishes, sir, shall be attended 
to.” 

“ And if you will be so good, in 
your better knowledge of the family, 
as to communicate freely with me, 
and to point out to me any means 
by which you think I maybe delicate- 
ly and really useful to Little Dorrit, 
1 shall feel under an obligation to 
you.” 

“Don’t name it, sir,” returned Plor- 
nish, “it’ll be ekally a pleasure and 
a — it’ll be ekally a pleasure and 
a — ” Finding himself unable to bal- 
ance his sentence after two efforts, Mr. 
Plornish wisely dropped it. He took 
Clennam’s card and appropriate pecu- 
niary compliment. 

He was earnest to finish his commis- 
sion at once, and his Principal was in 
the same mind. So his Principal of- 
fered to set him down at the Marshal- 
sea gate, and they drove in that direc- 
tion over Blackfriars Bridge. On the 
way, Arthur elicited from his new 
friend a confused summary of the in- 
terior life of Bleeding Heart Yard. 
They was all hard up there, Mr. Plor- 
nish said, uncommon hard up, to be 
sure. Well, he could n’t say how it was ; 
he did n’t know as anybody could say 
how it was ; all he know’d was, that so 
it was. When a man felt, on his own 
back and in his own belly, that he was 
poor, that man (Mr. Plornish gave it as 
his decided belief) know’d well that 
poor he was somehow or another, and 
you could n’t talk it out of him, no more 
than you could talk beef into him. 
Then, you see, some people as was bet- 
ter off said — and a good many such 
people lived pretty close up to the mark 
themselves if not beyond it so he ’d heerd 
— that they was “ improvident ” (that 
was the favorite word) down the Yard. 
For instance, if they see a man with his 
wife and children going to Hampton 
Court in a Wan, perhaps once in a 
year, they says, “ Hallo ! I thought you 
was poor, my improvident friend ! ” 
Why, Lord, how hard it was upon a 


man ! What was a man to do? He 
could n’t go mollancholly mad. and 
even if he did, you would n’t be the 
better for it. In Mr. Plornish’s judg- 
ment you would be the worse for it. 
Yet you seemed to want to make a man 
mollancholly mad. You was always 
at it, — if not with your right hand, with 
your left. What was they a doing in 
the Yard? Why, take a look at ’em 
and see. There was the girls and their 
mothers a working at their sewing or 
their shoe-binding or their trimming or 
their waistcoat-making, day and night 
and night and day, and not more than 
able to keep body and soul together 
after all, — often not so much. There 
was people of pretty well all sorts of 
trades you could name, all wanting to 
work, and yet not able to get it. There 
was old people, after working all their 
lives, going and being shut up in the 
workhouse, much worse fed and lodged 
and treated, altogether, than — Mr. 
Plornish said manufacturers, but ap- 
peared to mean malefactors. Why, a 
man did n’t know where to turn himself 
for a crumb of comfort. As to who was 
to blame for it, Mr. Plornish did n’t 
know who was to blame for it. He 
could tell you who suffered, but he 
could n’t tell you whose fault it was. It 
wasn’t his place to find out, and who ’d 
mind what he said, if he did find out ? 
He only know’d that it was n’t put right 
by them what undertook that line of 
business, and that it did n’t come right 
of itself. And, in brief, his illogical 
opinion was, that if you could n’t do 
nothing for him, you had better take 
nothing from him for doing of it ; so far 
as he could make out, that was about 
what it come to. Thus, in a prolix, 
gently-growling, foolish way, did Plor- 
nish turn the tangled skein of his estate 
about and about, like a blind man who 
was trying to find some beginning or 
end to it, until they reached the prison 
gate. There he left his Principal alone ; 
to wonder, as he rode away, how many 
thousand Plornishes there might be 
within a day or two’s journey of the 
Circumlocution Office, playing sundry 
curious variations on the same tune 
which were not known by ear in that 
glorious institution. 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


83 


CHAPTER XIII. 

PATRIARCHAL. 

The mention of Mr. Casby again 
revived, in Clennam’s memory, the 
smouldering embers of curiosity and 
interest which Mrs. Flintwinch had 
fanned on the night of his arrival. 
Flora Casby had been the beloved of 
his boyhood; and Flora was the daugh- 
ter and only child of wooden-headed 
old Christopher (so he was still occa- 
sionally spoken of by some irreverent 
spirits who had had dealings with him, 
and in whom familiarity had bred its 
proverbial result perhaps), who was 
reputed to be rich in weekly tenants, 
and to get a good quantity of blood out 
of the stones of several unpromising 
courts and alleys. 

After some days of inquiry and re- 
search, Arthur Clennam became con- 
vinced that the case of the Father of 
the Marshalsea was indeed a hopeless 
one, and sorrowfully resigned the idea 
of helping him to freedom again. He 
had no hopeful inquiry to make at pres- 
ent concerning Little Dorrit, either ; but 
he argued with himself that it might — 
for anything he knew, it might — be ser- 
viceable to the poor child, if he renewed 
this acquaintance. It is hardly neces- 
sary to add, that beyond all doubt he 
would have presented himself at Mr. 
Casby’s door, if there had been no 
Little Dorrit in existence ; for we all 
know how we all deceive ourselves, — 
that is to say, how people in general, 
our profounder selves excepted, de- 
ceive themselves, — as to motives of 
# action. 

With a comfortable impression upon 
him, and quite an honest one in its way, 
that he was still patronizing Little 
Dorrit in doing what had no reference 
to her, he found himself one afternoon 
at the corner of Mr. Casby’s street. 
Mr. Casby lived in a street in the Gray’s 
Inn Road, which had set off from that 
thoroughfare with the intention of run- 
ning at one heat down into the valley, 
and up again to the top of Pentonville 
Hill ; but which had run itself out of 
breath in twenty yards, and had stood 
still ever since. There is no such 


place in that part now ; but it remained 
there for many years, looking with a 
balked countenance at the wilderness 
patched with unfruitful gardens, and 
pimpled with eruptive summer-houses, 
that it had meant to run over it in no 
time. 

“The house,” thought Clennam, as 
he crossed to the door, “is as little 
changed as my mother’s, and looks 
almost as gloomy. But the likeness 
ends outside. I know its staid repose 
within. The smell of its jars of old 
rose-leaves and lavender seems to come 
upon me even here.” 

When his knock at the bright brass 
knocker of obsolete shape brought a 
woman-servant to the door, those faded 
scents in truth saluted him like wintry 
breath that had a faint remembrance in 
it of the bygone spring. He stepped 
into the sober, silent, air-tight house, 
— one might have fancied it to have 
been stifled by Mutes in the Eastern 
manner, — and the door, closing again, 
seemed to shut out sound and motion. 
The furniture was formal, grave, and 
Quaker-like, but well kept ; and had as 
prepossessing an aspect as anything, 
from a human creature to a wooden 
stool, that is meant for much use and 
is preserved for little, can ever wear. 
There was a grave clock, ticking some- 
where up the staircase ; and there was 
a songless bird in the same direction, 
pecking at his cage as if he were tick- 
ing too. The parlor fire ticked in the 
grate. There was only one person on 
die parlor hearth, and the loud watch 
in his pocket ticked audibly. 

The servant-maid had ticked the two 
words “ Mr. Glennam ” so softly that 
she had not been heard ; and he con- 
sequently stood, within the door she 
had closed, unnoticed. The figure of 
a man advanced in life, whose smooth 
gray eyebrows seemed to move to the 
ticking as the firelight flickered on 
them, sat in an arm-chair, with his list 
shoes on the rug, and his thumbs slowly 
revolving over one another. This was 
old Christopher Casby, — recognizable 
at a glance, — as unchanged in twenty 
years and upwards as his own solid 
furniture, — as little touched by the in- 
fluence of the varying seasons as the 


8 4 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


old rose-leaves and old lavender in his 
porcelain jars. 

Perhaps there never was a man, in this 
troublesome world, so troublesome for 
the imagination to picture as a boy. 
And yet he had changed very little m 
his progress through life. Confronting 
him, in the room in which he sat, was 
a boy’s portrait, which anybody seeing 
him would have identified as Master 
Christopher . Casby, aged ten ; though 
disguised with a haymaking rake, for 
which he had had, at anytime, as much 
taste or use as for a diving-bell ; and 
sitting (on one of his own legs) upon a 
bank of violets, moved, to precocious 
contemplation by the spire of a village 
church. There was the same smooth 
face and forehead, the same calm blue 
eye, the same placid air. The shining 
bald head, which looked so very large 
because it shone so much, and the 
long gray hair at its sides and back, like 
floss silk or spun glass, which looked 
so very benevolent because it was never 
cut, were not of course to be seen in 
the boy as in the old man. Neverthe- 
less, in the Seraphic creature with the 
haymaking rake were clearly to be dis- 
cerned the rudiments of the Patriarch 
with the list shoes. 

Patriarch was the name which many 
people delighted to give him. Various 
old ladies in the neighborhood spoke of 
him as The Last of the Patriarchs. So 
gray, so slow, so quiet, so impassionate, 
so very bumpy in the head, Patriarch 
was the word for him. He had been 
accosted in the streets, and respectfully 
solicited to become a Patriarch for 
painters and for sculptors, — with so 
much importunity, in sooth, that it 
would appear to be beyond the Fine 
Arts to remember the points of a Patri- 
arch, or to invent one. Philanthropists 
of both sexes had asked who he was, 
and, on being informed, “ Old Christo- 
pher Casby, formerly town agent to 
Lord Decimus Tite Barnacle,” had 
cried, in a rapture of disappointment, 
“O, why, with that head, is he not a 
benefactor to his species ! O, why, with 
that head, is he not a father to the or- 
phan and a friend to the friendless ! ” 
With that head, however, he remained 
old Christopher Casby, proclaimed by 


common report rich in house property ; 
and with that head he now sat in his 
silent parlor. Indeed, it would be the 
height of unreason to expect him to be 
sitting there without that head. 

Arthur Clennam moved to attract his 
attention, and the gray eyebrows turned 
towards him. 

“ I beg your pardon,” said Clen- 
nam, “ I fear you did not hear me an- 
nounced? ” 

“ No, sir, I did not. Did you wish 
to see me, sir?” 

“ I wished to pay my respects.” 

Mr. Casby seemed a feather’s weight 
disappointed by the last words, having 
perhaps prepared himself for the visit- 
or’s wishing to pay something else. 
“ Have I the pleasure, sir,” he pro- 
ceeded, — “ take a chair if you please, 
— have I the pleasure of knowing? — 
Ah ! truly, yes, I think I have ! I be- 
lieve I am not mistaken in supposing 
that I am acquainted with those fea- 
tures. I think I address a gentleman 
of whose return to this country I was 
informed by Mr. Flintwinch ? ” 

“ That is your present visitor.” 

“Really! Mr. Clennam?” 

“No other, Mr. Casby.” 

“ Mr. Clennam, I am glad to see 
you. How have you been since we 
met? ” 

Without thinking it worth while to 
explain that, in the course of some 
quarter of a century, he had experienced 
occasional slight fluctuations in his 
health and spirits, Clennam answered 
generally that he had never been bet- 
ter, or something equally to the pur- 
pose ; and shook hands with the pos- 
sessor of “ that head,” as it shed its 
patriarchal light upon him. 

“We are older, Mr. Clennam,” said 
Christopher Casby. 

“We are — not younger,” said Clen- 
nam. After this wise remark, he felt 
that he was scarcely shining with bril- 
liancy, and became aware that he was 
nervous. 

“And your respected father,” said 
Mr. Casby, “is no more ! I was 
grieved to hear it, Mr. Clennam, — I 
was grieved.” 

Arthur replied, in the usual way, that 
he felt infinitely obliged to him. 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


35 


** There was a time,” said Mr. Cas- 
by, “ when your parents and myself 
were not on friendly terms. There was 
a little family misunderstanding among 
us. Your respected mother was rather 
jealous of her son, may be. When I 
say her son, I mean your worthy self, — 
your worthy self.” 

His smooth face had a bloom upon 
it, like ripe wall-fruit. What with his 
blooming face and that head and his 
blue eyes, he seemed to be delivering 
sentiments of rare wisdom and virtue. 
In like manner, his physiognomical ex- 
pression seemed to teem with benignity. 
Nobody could have said where the 
wisdom was, or where the virtue was, 
or where the benignity was ; but they 
all seemed to be somewhere about him. 

“Those times, however,” pursued 
Mr. Casby, “ are past and gone, — past 
and gone. Ido myself the pleasure of 
making a visit to your respected mother 
occasionally, and of admiring the forti- 
tude and strength of mind with which 
she bears her trials, — bears her trials.” 

When he made one of these little 
repetitions, sitting with his hands 
crossed before him, he did it with his 
head on one side, and a gentle smile, as 
if he had something in his thoughts too 
sweetly profound to be put into words. 
As if he denied himself the pleasure of 
uttering it, lest he should soar too high ; 
and his meekness therefore preferred to 
be unmeaning. 

“I have heard that you were kind 
enough on one of those occasions,” said 
Arthur, catching at the opportunity as 
it drifted past him, “to mention Little 
Dorrit to my mother.” 

“ Little — ? Dorrit ? That ’s the 
seamstress who was mentioned to me 
by a small tenant of mine? Yes, yes. 
Dorrit ? That ’s the name. Ah, yes, 
yes! You call her Little Dorrit?” 

No road in that direction. Nothing 
came of the cross-cut. It led no fur- 
ther. 

“My daughter Flora,” said Mr. Cas- 
by, “ as you may have heard probably, 
Mr. Clennam, was married and estab- 
lished in life several years ago. She 
had the misfortune to lose her husband 
when she had been married a few 
months. She resides with me again. 


I She will be glad to see you, if you will 
permit me to let her know that you are 
here.” 

“ By all means,” returned Clennam. 
“ I should have preferred the request, if 
your kindness had not anticipated me.” 

Upon this, Mr. Casby rose up in his 
list shoes, and with a slow, heavy step 
(he was of an elephantine build), made 
for the door. He had a long wide- 
skirted bottle-green coat on, and a bot- 
tle-green pair of trousers, and a bottle- 
green waistcoat. The Patriarchs were 
not dressed in bottle-green broadcloth, 
and yet his clothes looked patriarchal. 

He had scarcely left the room, and 
allowed the ticking to become audible 
again, when a quick hand turned a 
latch-key in the house door, opened it, 
and shut it. Immediately afterwards, a 
quick and eager short dark man came 
into the room with so much way upon 
him that he was within a foot of Clen- 
nam before he could stop. 

“ Halloa ! ” he said. 

Clennam saw no reason why he should 
not say “ Halloa ! ” too. 

“ What ’s the matter? ” said the short 
dark man. 

“ I have not heard that anything is 
the matter,” returned Clennam. 

“Where’s Mr. Casby?” asked the 
short dark man, looking about. 

“ He will be here directly, if you want 
him.” 

“7 want him?” said the short dark 
man. “Don’t you?” 

This elicited a word or two of expla- 
nation from Clennam, during the deliv- 
ery of which the short dark man held 
his breath and looked at him. He was 
dressed in black, and rusty iron gray ; 
had jet black beads of eyes ; a scrubby 
little black chin ; wiry black hair strik- 
ing out from his head in prongs, like 
forks or hair-pins ; and a complexion 
that was very dingy by nature, or very 
dirty by art, or a compound of nature 
and art. He had dirty hands and dirty 
broken nails, and looked as if he had 
been in the coals ; he was in a perspira- 
tion, and snorted and sniffed and puffed 
and blew, like a little laboring steam- 
engine. 

“Oh !” said he, when Arthur had told 
him how he came to be there. “Very 


LITTLE DORRIT. 



well. That ’s right. If he should ask 
for Pancks, will you be so good as to 
say that Pancks is come in ?” And so, 
with a snort and a puff, he worked out 
by another door. 

Now, in the old days at home, cer- 
tain audacious doubts respecting the 
last of the Patriarchs, which were afloat 
in the air, had, by some forgotten 
means, come in contact with Arthur’s 
sensorium. He was aware of motes and 
specks of suspicion in the atmosphere 
of that time ; seen through which me- 
dium, Christopher Casby was a mere 
Inn signpost without any Inn, — an in- 
vitation to rest and be thankful, when 
there was no place to put up at, and 
nothing whatever to be thankful for. 
He knew that some of these specks 
even represented Christopher as capa- 
ble of harboring designs in “ that head,” 
and as being a crafty impostor. Other 
motes there were which showed him as 
a heavy, selfish, drifting Booby, who, 
having stumbled, in the course of his 
unwieldy jostlings against other men, 
on the discovery that to get through life 
with ease and credit, he had but to hold 
his tongue, keep the bald part of his 
head well polished, and leave his hair 
alone, had had just cunning enough to 
seize the idea and stick to it. It was 
said that his being town-agent to Lord 
Decimus Tite Barnacle was referable, 
not to his having the least business ca- 
pacity, but to his looking so supremely 
benignant that nobody could suppose 
the property screwed or jobbed under 
such a man ; also, that for similar rea- 
sons he now got more money out of his 
own wretched lettings, unquestioned, 
than anybody with a less knobby and 
less shining crown could possibly have 
done. In a word, it was represented 
(Clennam called to mind, alone in the 
ticking parlor) that many people select 
their models, much as the painters, just 
now mentioned, select theirs ; and that, 
whereas in the Royal Academy some evil 
old ruffian, of a Dog-stealer will annual- 
ly be found embodying all the cardinal 
virtues, on account of his eyelashes, or 
his chin, or his legs (thereby planting 
thorns of confusion in the breasts of the 
more observant students of nature), so, 
in the great social Exhibition, accesso- 


ries are often accepted in lieu of the in- 
ternal character. 

Calling these things to mind, and 
ranging Mr. Pancks in a row with them, 
Arthur Clennam leaned this day to the 
opinion, without quite deciding on it, 
that the last of the Patriarchs was the 
drifting Booby aforesaid, with the one 
idea of keeping the bald part of his 
head highly polished : and that, much 
as an unwieldy ship in the Thames River 
may sometimes be seen heavily driving 
with the tide, broadside on, stern first, 
in its own way and in the way of every- 
thing else, though making a great show 
of navigation, when all of a sudden, a 
little coaly steam-tug will bear down 
upon it, take it in tow, and bustle off 
with it ; similarly, the cumbrous Patri- 
arch had been taken in tow by the 
snorting Pancks, and was now following 
in the wake of that dingy little craft. 

The return of Mr. Casby, with his 
daughter Flora, put an end to these 
meditations. Clennam ’s eyes no soon- 
er fell upon the object of his old passion, 
than it shivered and broke to pieces. 

Most men will be found sufficiently 
true to themselves to be true to an old 
idea. It is no proof of an inconstant 
mind, but exactly the opposite, when 
the idea will not bear close comparison 
with the reality, and the contrast is a 
fatal shock to it. Such was Clennam’s 
case. In his youth he had ardently 
loved this woman, and had heaped upon 
her all the locked-up wealth of his 
affection and imagination. That wealth 
had been, in his desert home, like Rob- 
ison Crusoe’s money ; exchangeable with 
no one, lying idle in the dark to rust, 
until he poured it out for her. Ever 
since that memorable time, though he 
had, until the night of his arrival, as 
completely dismissed her from any asso- 
ciation with his Present or Future as if 
she had been dead (which she might 
easily have been for anything he knew), 
he had kept the old fancy of the Past 
unchanged, in its old sacred place. And 
now, after all, the last of the Patriarchs 
coolly walked into the parlor, saying in 
effect, “ Be good enough to throw it 
down and dance upon it. This is 
Flora.” 

Flora, always tall, had grown to be 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


87 


very broad too, and short of breath ; 
but that was not much. Flora, whom 
he had left a lily, had become a peony ; 
but that was not much. Flora, who 
had seemed enchanting in all she said 
and thought, was diffuse and silly. 
That was much. Flora, who had been 
spoiled and artless long ago, was deter- 
mined to be spoiled and artless now. 
That was a fatal blow. 

This is Flora ! 

“ I am sure,” giggled Flora, tossing 
her head with a caricature of her girlish 
manner, such as a mummer might have 
presented at her own funeral, if she had 
lived and died in classical antiquity, “ I 
am ashamed to see Mr. Clennam, I am 
a mere fright, I know he ’ll find me 
fearfully changed, I am actually an old 
woman, it’s shocking to be so found 
out, it ’s really shocking ! ” 

He assured her that she was just what 
he had expected, and that time had not 
stood still with himself. 

“ Oh ! But with a gentleman it ’s so 
different and really you look so amaz- 
ingly well that you have no right to say 
anything of the kind, while, as to me 
you know — oh ! ” cried Flora with a lit- 
tle scream, “ I am dreadful ! ” 

The Patriarch, apparently not yet un- 
derstanding his own part in the drama 
under representation, glowed with va- 
cant serenity. 

“ But if we talk of not having 
changed,” said Flora, who, whatever 
she said, never once came to a full stop, 
“look at papa, is not papa precisely 
what he was when you went away, is n’t 
it cruel and unnatural of papa to be 
such a reproach to his own child, if 
we go on in this way much longer peo- 
ple who don’t know us will begin to 
suppose that I am papa’s mamma ! ” 

That must be a long time hence, 
Arthur considered. 

“ O Mr. Clennam you insincerest of 
creatures,” said Flora. “ I perceive 
already you have not lost your old way 
of paying compliments, your old way 
when you used to pretend to be so sen- 
timentally struck you know — at least I 
don’t mean that, I — O I don’t know 
what I mean ! ” Here Flora tittered 
confusedly, and gave him one of her old 
glances. 


The Patriarch, as if lie now began to 
perceive that his part in the piece was 
to get off the stage as soon as might be, 
rose, and went to the door by which 
Pancks had worked out, hailing that 
Tug by name. He received an answer 
from some little Dock beyond, and was 
towed out of sight directly. 

“You mustn’t think of going yet,” 
said Flora, — Arthur had looked at his 
hat, being in a ludicrous dismay, and 
not knowing what to do ; “ you could 
never be so unkind as to think of going, 
Arthur, — I mean Mr. Arthur, — or I 
suppose Mr. Clennam would be far 
more proper, — but I am sure I don’t 
know what I ’m saying, — without a 
word about the dear old days gone for- 
ever, however when I come to think of 
it I dare say it would be much better 
not to speak of them and it ’s highly 
probable that you have some much 
more agreeable engagement and pray 
let Me be the last person in the world to 
interfere with it though there was a time, 
but I am running into nonsense again.” 

Was it possible that Flora could have 
been such a chatterer in the days she 
referred to? Could there have been 
anything like her present disjointed 
volubility in the fascinations that had 
captivated him? 

“ Indeed I have little doubt,” said 
Flora, running on with astonishing 
speed, and pointing her conversation 
with nothing but commas, and very few 
of them, “ that you are married to some 
Chinese lady, being in China so long 
and being in business and naturally 
desirous to settle and extend your con- 
nection nothing was more likely than 
that you should propose to a Chinese 
lady and nothing was more natural I 
am sure than that the Chinese lady 
should accept you and think herself 
very well off too, I only hope she ’s not 
a Pagodian dissenter.” 

“ 1 am not,” returned Arthur, smil- 
ing in spite of himself, “ married to any 
lady, Flora.” 

“ O good gracious me I hope you 
never kept yourself a bachelor so long 
on my account ! ” tittered Flora ; “but 
of course you never did why should 
you, pray don’t answer, I don’t know 
where I ’m running to, O do tell me 


88 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


something about the Chinese ladies 
whether their eyes are really so long 
and narrow always putting me in mind 
of mother-of-pearl fish at cards and do 
they really wear tails down their back 
and plaited too or is it only the men, 
and when they pull their hair so very 
tight off their foreheads don’t they hurt 
themselves, and why do they stick little 
bells all over their bridges and temples 
and hats and things or don’t they really 
do it ! ” Flora gave him another of her 
old glances. Instantly she went on 
again, as if he had spoken in reply for 
some time. 

“Then it’s all true and they really 
do ! good gracious Arthur ! — pray ex- 
cuse me — old habit — Mr. Clennam 
far more proper — what a country to 
live in for so long a time, and with so 
many lanterns and umbrellas too how 
very dark and wet the climate ought to 
be and no doubt actually is, and the 
sums of money that must be made by 
those two trades where everybody car- 
ries them and hangs them everywhere, 
the little shoes too and the feet screwed 
back in infancy is quite surprising, what 
a traveller you are ! ” 

In his ridiculous distress, Clennam 
received another of the old glances, 
without in the least knowing what to do 
with it. 

“Dear dear,” said Flora, “only to 
think of the changes at home Arthur — 
cannot overcome it, seems so natural, 
Mr. Clennam far more proper — since 
you became familiar with the Chinese 
customs and language which I am per- 
suaded you speak like a native if not 
better for you were always quick and 
clever though immensely difficult no 
doubt, I am sure the tea chests alone 
would kill me if I tried, such changes, 
Arthur, — I am doing it again, seems so 
natural, most improper, — as no one 
could have believed, who could have 
ever imagined Mrs. Finching when I 
can’t imagine it myself! ” 

“ Is that your married name ? ” asked 
Arthur, struck, in the midst of all this, 
by a certain warmth of heart that ex- 
pressed itself in her tone when she re- 
ferred, however oddly, to the youthful 
relation in which they had stood to one 
another. “ Finching? ” 


“ Finching oh yes isn’t it a dreadful 
name, but as Mr. F. said when he pro- 
posed to me which he did seven times 
and handsomely consented I must say 
to be what he used to call on liking 
twelve months after all, he was n’t an- 
swerable for it and couldn’t help it 
could he, excellent man, not at all like 
you but excellent man ! ” 

Flora had at last talked herself out 
of breath for one moment. One mo- 
ment ; for she recovered breath in the 
act of raising a minute corner of her 
pocket-handkerchief to her eye, as a 
tribute to the ghost of the departed Mr. 
F., and began again. 

“No one could dispute, Arthur — 
Mr. Clennam — that it ’s quite right 
you should be formally friendly to me 
under the altered circumstances and in- 
deed you couldn’t be anything else, at 
least I suppose not you ought to know, 
but I can’t help recalling that there was 
a time when things were very different.” 

“ My dear Mrs. Finching,” Arthur 
began, struck by the good tone again ! 

“ O not that nasty ugly name, say 
Flora ! ” 

“ Flora. I assure you, Flora, I am 
happy in seeing you once more, and in 
finding that, like me, you have not for- 
gotten the old foolish dreams, when we 
saw all before us in the light of our 
3 'outh and hope.” 

“ You don’t seem so,” pouted Flora, 
“ you take it very coolly, but however I 
know you are disappointed in me, I 
suppose the Chinese ladies — Man- 
darinesses if you call them so — are 
the cause or perhaps I am the cause 
myself, it’s just as likely.” 

“ No, no,” Clennam entreated, “ don’t 
say that.” 

“0 1 must you know,” said Flora, 
in a positive tone, “ what nonsense not 
to, I know I am not what you expected, 
I know that very well.” 

In the midst of her rapidity, she had 
found that out with the quick percep- 
tion of a cleverer woman. The incon- 
sistent and profoundly unreasonable way 
in which she instantly went on, never- 
theless, to interweave their long-aban- 
doned boy-and-girl relations with their 
present interview, made Clennam feel 
as if he were light-headed. 


LITTLE 

“ One remark,” said Flora, giving 
their conversation, without the slightest 
notice and to the great terror of Clen- 
nam, the tone of a love-quarrel, ‘‘I 
wish to make, one explanation I wish 
to offer, when your mamma came and 
made a scene of it with my papa and 
when I was called down into the little 
breakfast-room where they were looking 
at one another with your mamma’s 
parasol between them seated on two 
chairs like mad bulls what was I to 
do ! ” 

“ My dear Mrs. Finching,” urged 
Clennam — “all so long ago and so 
long concluded, is it worth while seri- 
ously to — ” 

“ I can’t Arthur,” returned Flora, 
“ be denounced as heartless by the 
whole society of China without setting 
myself right when I have the opportu- 
nity of doing so, and you must be very 
well aware that there was Paul and 
Virginia which had to be returned and 
which was returned without note or 
comment, not that I mean to say you 
could have written to me watched as I 
was but if it had only come back with a 
red wafer on the cover I should have 
known that it meant Come to Pekin, 
Nankeen and What’s the third place, 
barefoot.” 

“ My dear Mrs. Finching, you were 
not to blame, and I never blamed you. 
We were both too young, too depend- 
ent and helpless, to do anything but 
accept our separation. Pray think how 
long ago,” gently remonstrated Ar- 
thur. 

“ One more remark,” proceeded Flora 
with unslackened volubility, “ I wish 
to make, one more explanation I wish 
to offer, for five days I had a cold in 
the head from crying which I passed 
entirely in the back drawing-room, — 
there is the back drawing-room still 
on the first floor and still at the back of 
the house to confirm my words, — when 
that dreary period had passed a lull 
succeeded years rolled on and Mr. F. 
became acquainted with us at a mutual 
friend’s, he was all attention he called 
next day he soon began to call three 
evenings a week and to send in little 
things for supper, it was not love on 
Mr. F.’s part it was adoration, Mr. F. 


DORR IT. 89 

proposed with the full approval of papa 
and what could I do ? ” 

“Nothing whatever,” said Arthur, 
with the cheerfulest readiness, “ but 
what you did. Let an old friend assure 
you of his full conviction that you did 
quite right.” 

“ One last remark,” proceeded Flora, 
rejecting commonplace life with a wave 
of her hand, “ I wish to make, one last 
explanation I wish to offer, there was a 
time ere Mr. F. first paid attentions in- 
capable of being mistaken, but that is 
past and was not to be, dear Mr. Clen- 
nam you no longer wear a golden chain 
ou are free I trust you may be happjr, 
ere is papa who is always tiresome 
and putting in his nose everywhere 
where he is not wanted.” 

With these words, and with a hasty 
gesture fraught with timid caution, — 
such a gesture had Clennam’s eyes 
been familiar with in the old time, — 
poor Flora left herself, at eighteen 
years of age, a long, long way behind 
again ; and came to a full stop at last. 

Or rather, she left about half of herself 
at eighteen years of agebehind, andgraft- 
ed the rest on to the relict of the late Mr. 
F. ; thus making a moral mermaid of her- 
self, which her once boy-lover contem- 
plated with feelings wherein his sense of 
the sorrowful and his sense of the comi- 
cal were curiously blended. 

For example. As if there were a 
secret understanding between herself 
and Clennam of the most thrilling na- 
ture ; as if the first of a train of post- 
chaises and four, extending all the way 
to Scotland, were at that moment round 
the corner ; and as if she couldn’t (and 
would n’t) have walked into the Parish 
Church with him, under the shade of 
the family umbrella, with the Patriarchal 
blessing on her head, and the perfect 
concurrence of all mankind ; Flora com- 
forted her soul with agonies of mysteri- 
ous signalling, expressing dread of dis- 
covery. With the sensation of becom- 
ing more and more light-headed every 
minute, Clennam saw the relict of the 
late Mr. F. enjoying herself in the most 
wonderful manner, by putting herself 
and him in their old places, and going 
through all the old performances, — 
now, when the stage was dusty, when 


90 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


the scenery was faded, when the youth- 
ful actors were dead, when the orchestra 
was empty, when the lights were out. 
And still, through all this grotesque 
revival of what he remembered as hav- 
ing once been prettily natural to her, 
he could not but feel that it revived at 
sight of him, and that there was a ten- 
der memory in it. 

The Patriarch insisted on his staying 
to dinner, and Flora signalled “ Yes ! ” 
Clennam so wished he could have done 
more than stay to dinner, — so heartily 
wished he could have found the Flora 
that had been, or that never had been, 
— that he thought the least atonement 
he could make for the disappointment 
he almost felt ashamed of, was to give 
himself up to the family desire. There- 
fore he stayed to dinner. 

Pancks dined with them. Pancks 
steamed out of his little dock at a quar- 
ter before six, and bore straight down 
for the Patriarch, who happened to be 
then driving, in an inane manner, 
through a stagnant account of Bleeding 
Heart Yard. Pancks instantly made 
fast to him and hauled him out. 

“ Bleeding Heart Yard ? ” said 
Pancks, with a puff and a snort. “ It ’s 
a troublesome property. Don’t pay 
you badly, but rents are very hard to 
get there. You have more trouble with 
that one place than with all the places 
belonging to you.” 

Just as the big ship in tow gets the 
credit, with most spectators, of being 
the powerful object, so the Patriarch 
usually seemed to have said himself 
whatever Pancks said for him. 

“ Indeed ? ” returned Clennam, upon 
whom this impression was so efficiently 
made by a mere gleam of the polished 
head, that he spoke the ship instead 
of the tug. “ The people are so poor 
there ? ” 

“ You can’t say, you know,” snorted 
Pancks, taking one of his dirty hands 
out of his rusty iron-gray pockets to 
bite his nails, if he could find any, and 
turning his beads of eyes upon his 
employer, “ whether they ’re poor or 
not. They say they are, but they all 
say that. When a man says he ’s rich, 
you ’re generally sure he is n’t. Besides, 
if they are poor, you can’t help it. 


You’d be poor yourself if you didn’t 
get your rents.” 

“ True enough,” said Arthur. 

“You’re not going to keep open 
house for all the poor of London,” pur- 
sued Pancks. “ You ’re not going to 
lodge ’em for nothing. You ’re not 
going to open your gates wide and let 
’em come free. Not if you know it, 
you ain’t.” 

Mr. Casby shook his head, in placid 
and benignant generality. 

“ If a man takes a room of you at 
half a crown a week, and when the 
week comes round hasn’t got the half- 
crown, you say to that man, Why have 
you got the room, then? If you have 
n’t got the one thing, why have you 
got the other? What have you been 
and done with your money ? What do 
you mean by it ? What are you up to ? 
That ’s what you say to a man of that 
sort ; and if you did n’t say it, more 
shame for you ! ” Mr. Pancks here 
made a singular and startling noise, 
produced by a strong blowing effort in 
the region of the nose, unattended by 
any result but that acoustic one. 

“You have some extent of such prop- 
erty about the east and northeast 
here, I believe? ” said Clennam, doubt- 
ful which of the two to address. 

“ O, pretty well,” said Pancks. “ You 
’re not particular to east or northeast, 
any point of the compass will do for 
you. What you want is a good invest- 
ment and a quick return. You take it 
where you can find it. You ain’t nice 
as to situation, — not you.” 

There was a fourth and most original 
figure in the Patriarchal tent, who also 
appeared before dinner. This was an 
amazing little old woman, with a face 
like a staring wooden doll too cheap 
for expression, and a stiff yellow wig 
perched unevenly on the top of her 
head, as if the child who owned the 
doll had driven a tack through it any- 
where, so that it only got fastened on. 
Another remarkable thing in this little 
old woman was, that the same child 
seemed to have damaged her face in 
two or three places with some blunt 
instrument in the nature of a spoon ; 
her countenance, and particularly the 
tip of her nose, presenting the phenom- 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


9 * 


ena of several' dints, generally answer- 
ing to the bowl of that article. A fur- 
ther remarkable thing in this little old 
woman was, that she had no name but 
Mr. F.’s Aunt. 

She broke upon the visitor’s view un- 
der the following circumstances : Flora 
said, when the first dish was being put 
on table, perhaps Mr. Clennam might 
not have heard that Mr. F. had left her 
a legacy ? Clennam in return implied 
his hope that Mr. F. had endowed the 
wife whom he adored with the greater 
part of his worldly substance, if not 
\vith all. Flora said, O yes, she did n’t 
mean that, Mr. F. had made a beauti- 
ful will, but he had left her as a sepa- 
rate legacy, his Aunt. She then went 
out of the room to fetch the legacy, and 
on her return rather triumphantly pre- 
sented “Mr. F.’s Aunt.” 

The major characteristics discover- 
able by the stranger in Mr. F.’s Aunt 
were extreme severity and grim taci- 
turnity ; sometimes interrupted by a 
propensity to offer remarks, in a deep 
warning voice, which, being totally un- 
called for by anything said by anybody, 
and traceable to no association of ideas, 
confounded and terrified the mind. Mr. 
F.’s Aunt may have thrown in these 
observations on some system of her 
own, and it may have been ingenious, 
or even subtle ; but the key to it was 
wanted. 

The neatly served and well-cooked 
dinner (for everything about the Patri- 
archal household promoted quiet diges- 
tion) began with some soup, some fried 
soles, a butter-boat of shrimp sauce, 
and a dish of potatoes. The conversa- 
tion still turned on the receipt of rents. 
Mr. F.’s Aunt, after regarding the com- 
pany for ten minutes with a malevolent 
gaze, delivered the following fearful re- 
mark. 

“ When we lived at Henley, Barnes’s 
gander was stole by tinkers.” 

Mr. Pancks courageously nodded his 
head and said, “All right, ma’am.” 
But the effect of this mysterious com- 
munication upon Clennam was abso- 
lutely to frighten him. And another 
circumstance invested this old lady with 
peculiar terrors. Though she was al- 
ways staring, she never acknowledged 


that she saw any individual. The po- 
lite and attentive stranger would desire, 
say, to consult her inclinations on the 
subject of potatoes. His expressive 
action would be hopelessly lost upon 
her, and what could he do? No man 
could say, “Mr. F.’sr Aunt, will you 
permit me ? ” Every man retired from 
the spoon, as Clennam did, cowed and 
baffled. 

There was mutton, a steak, and an 
apple-pie, — nothing in the remotest 
way connected with ganders, — and the 
dinner went on like a disenchanted 
feast, as it truly was. Once upon a 
time Clennam had sat at that table 
taking no heed of anything but Flora ; 
now the principal heed he took of Flora 
was, to observe, against his will, that 
she was very fond of porter, that she 
combined a great deal of sherry with 
sentiment, and that if she were a little 
overgrown it was upon substantial 
grounds. The last of the Patriarchs 
had always been a mighty eater, and he 
disposed of an immense quantity of 
solid food with the benignity of a good 
soul who was feeding some one else. 
Mr. Pancks, who was always in a hurry 
and who referred at intervals to a little 
dirty note-book which he kept beside 
him (perhaps containing the names of 
the defaulters he meant to look up by 
way of dessert), took in his victuals 
much as if he were coaling ; with a 
good deal of noise, a good deal of drop- 
ping about, and a puff and a snort occa- 
sionally, as if he were nearly ready to 
steam away. 

All through dinner, Flora combined 
her present appetite for eating and 
drinking with her past appetite for ro- 
mantic love, in a way that made Clen- 
nam afraid to lift his eyes from his 
plate ; since he could not look towards 
her without receiving some glance of 
mysterious meaning or warning, as if 
they were engaged in a plot. Mr. F.’s 
Aunt sat silently defying him with an 
aspect of the greatest bitterness, until 
the removal of the cloth and the ap- 
pearance of the decanters, when she 
originated another observation, — struck 
into the conversation like a clock, with- 
out consulting anybody. 

Flora had just said, “ Mr. Clennam, 


92 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


will you give me a glass of port for Mr. 
F.’s Aunt?” 

“ The Monument near London 
Bridge,” that lady instantly proclaimed, 
“ was put up arter the Great Fire of 
London ; and the Great Fire of London 
was not the fire in which your uncle 
George’s workshops was burned down.” 

Mr. Pancks, with his former courage, 
said, “Indeed, ma’am? All right!” 
But appearing to be incensed by imag- 
inary contradiction, or other ill-usage, 
Mr. F.’s Aunt, instead of relapsing into 
silence, made the following additional 
proclamation, — 

“ I hate a fool ! ” 

She imparted to this sentiment, in it- 
self almost Solomonic, so extremely in- 
jurious and personal a character, by 
levelling it straight at the visitor’s head, 
that it became necessary to lead Mr. 
F.’s Aunt from the room. This was 
quietly done by Flora ; Mr. F.’s Aunt 
offering no resistance, but inquiring on 
her way out, “ What he come there for, 
then ? ” with implacable animosity. 

When Flora returned, she explained 
that her legacy was a clever old lady, 
but was sometimes a little singular, 
and “took dislikes,” — peculiarities of 
which Flora seemed to be proud rather 
than otherwise. As Flora’s good na- 
ture shone in the case, Clennam had no 
fault to find with the old lady for elicit- 
ing it, now that he was relieved from 
the terrors of her presence ; and they 
took a glass or two of wine in peace. 
Foreseeing then that the Pancks would 
shortly get under way, and that the 
Patriarch would go to sleep, he pleaded 
the necessity of visiting his mother, and 
asked Mr. Pancks in which direction 
he was going ? 

“Citywards, sir,” said Pancks. 

“ Shall we walk together? ” said Arthur. 

“Quite agreeable,” said Pancks. 

Meanwhile Flora was murmuring in 
rapid snatches for his ear, that there 
was a time and that the past was a 
yawning gulf however and that a golden 
chain no longer bound him and that 
she revered the memory of the late Mr. 
F. and that she should be at home to- 
morrow at half past one and that the 
decrees of Fate were beyond recall and 
that she considered nothing so improb- 


able as that he ever walked on the 
northwest side of Gray’s-Inn Gardens 
at exactly four o’clock in the afternoon. 
He tried at parting to give his hand in 
frankness to the existing Flora, — not 
the vanished Flora, or the Mermaid, — 
but Flora wouldn’t have it, couldn’t 
have it, was wholly destitute of the 
power of separating herself and him 
from their bygone characters. He left 
the house miserably enough ; and so 
much more light-headed than ever, 
that if it had not been his good fortune 
to be towed away, he might, for the 
first quarter of an hour, have drifted 
anywhere. 

When he began to come to himself, 
in the cooler air and the absence of 
Flora, he found Pancks at full speed, 
cropping such scanty pasturage of nails 
as he could find, and snorting at inter- 
vals. These, in conjunction with one 
hand in his pocket and his roughened 
hat hind side before, were evidently 
the conditions under which he re- 
flected. 

“ A fresh night ! ” said Arthur. 

“Yes, it’s pretty fresh,” assented 
Pancks. “ As a stranger, you feel the 
climate more than I do, I dare say. 
Indeed, I have n’t got time to feel it.” 

“ You lead such a busy life? ” 

“ Yes, I have always some of ’em to 
look up, or something to look after. 
But I like business,” said Pancks, get- 
ting on a little faster. “ What ’s a man 
made for ? ” 

“For nothing else ? ” said Clennam. 

Pancks put the counter-question, 
“ What else ? ” It packed up, in the 
smallest compass, a weight that had 
rested on Clennam’s life ; and he made 
no answer. 

“ That ’s what I ask our weekly ten- 
ants,” said Pancks. “ Some of ’em 
will pull long faces to me, and say, 
‘Poor as you see us, master, we’re 
always grinding, drudging, toiling, ev- 
ery minute we ’re awake.’ I say to 
them, What else are you made for? 
It shuts them up. They haven’t a 
word to answer. What else are you 
made for? That clinches it.” 

“Ah dear, dear, dear! ” sighed Clen- 
nam. 

“ Here am I,” said Pancks, pursuing 


* 



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1 
































































LITTLE DORRIT. 


93 


his argument with the weekly tenant. 
“ What else do you suppose I think 
I am made for? Nothing. Rattle me 
out of bed early, set me going, give me 
as short a time as you like to bolt my 
meals in, and keep me at it. Keep me 
always at it, I ’ll keep you always at it, 
you keep somebody else always at it. 
There you are, with the Whole Duty of 
Man in a commercial country.” 

When they had walked a little far- 
ther in silence, Clennam said : “ Have 
you no taste for anything, Mr. Pancks? ” 

“What’s taste?” dryly retorted 
Pancks. 

“ Let us say inclination.” 

“ I have an inclination to get money, 
sir,” said Pancks, “if you ’ll show me 
how.” He blew off that sound again, 
and it occurred to his companion for 
the first time that it was his way of 
laughing. He was a singular man in 
all respects ; he might not have been 
quite in earnest, but that the short, 
hard, rapid manner in which he shot 
out these cinders of principles, as if it 
were done by mechanical revolvency, 
seemed irreconcilable with banter. 

“You are no great reader, I sup- 
pose ? ” said Clennam. 

“ Never read anything but letters and 
accounts. Never collect anything but 
advertisements relative to next of kin. 
If that ’s a taste, I have got that. 
You ’re not of the Clennams of Corn- 
wall, Mr. Clennam.” 

“Not that I ever heard of.” 

“ I know you ’re not. I asked your 
mother, sir. She has too much charac- 
ter to let a chance escape her.” 

“ Supposing I had been of the Clen- 
nams of Cornwall? ” 

“ You ’d have heard of something to 
your advantage.” 

“ Indeed ! I have heard of little 
enough to my advantage for some time.’ 

“ There ’s a Cornish property going a 
begging, sir, and not a Cornish Clen- 
nam to have it for the asking,” said 
Pancks, taking his note-book from his 
breast-pocket and putting it in again. 
“ I turn off here. I wish you good 
night.” 

“ Good night ! ” said Clennam. But 
the Tug suddenly lightened, and, un- 
trammelled by having any weight in 


tow, was already puffing away into the 
distance. 

They had crossed Smithfield togeth- 
er, and Clennam was left alone at the 
corner of Barbican. He had no inten- 
tion of presenting himself in his moth- 
er’s dismal room that night, and could 
not have felt more depressed and cast 
away if he had been in a wilderness. 
He turned slowly down Aldersgate 
Street, and was pondering his way along 
towards Saint Paul’s, purposing to come 
into one of the great thoroughfares for 
the sake of their light and life, vvhen a 
crowd of people flocked towards him on 
the same pavement, and he stood aside 
against a shop to let them pass. As 
they came up, he made out that they 
were gathered round a something that 
was carried on men’s shoulders. He 
soon saw that it was a litter, hastily 
made of a shutter or some such thing ; 
and a recumbent figure upon it, and the 
scraps of conversation in the crowd, and 
a muddy bundle carried by one man, and 
a muddy hat carried by another, in- 
formed him that an accident had oc- 
curred. The litter stopped under a 
lamp before it had passed him half a 
dozen paces, for some readjustment of 
the burden ; and, the crowd stopping 
too, he found himself in the midst of 
the array. 

“ An accident going to the Hospital ? ” 
he asked an old man beside him, who 
stood shaking his head, inviting conver- 
sation. 

“ Yes,” said the man, “ along of them 
Mails. They ought to be prosecuted 
and fined, them Mails. They come a 
racing out of Lad Lane and Wood 
Street at twelve or fourteen mile a 
hour, them Mails do. The only won- 
der is, that people ain’t killed oftener 
by them Mails.” 

“ This person is not killed, I hope ? ” 

. “ I don’t know ! ” said the man, “ it 
ain’t for the want of a will in them 
Mails, if he ain’t.” The speaker hav- 
ing folded his arms, and set in com- 
fortably to address his depreciation of 
them Mails to any of the by-standers 
who would listen, several voices, out of 
pure sympathy with the sufferer, con- 
firmed him ; one voice saying to Clen- 
nam, “ They ’re a public nuisance, them 


94 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


Mails, sir”; another, “/see one on 
’em pull up within half a inch of a boy, 
last night”; another, “/ see one on 
’em go over a cat, sir, — and it might 
have been your own mother ” ; and all 
representing, by implication, that if he 
happened to possess any public influ- 
ence, he could not use it better than 
against them Mails. 

“ Why, a native Englishman is put 
to it every night of his life, to save his 
life from them Mails,” argued the first 
old man ; “ and he knows when they ’re 
a coming round the corner to tear him 
limb from limb. What can you expect 
from a poor foreigner who don’t know 
nothing about ’em ! ” 

“Is this a foreigner?” said Clen- 
nam, leaning forward to look. 

In the midst of such replies as 
“Frenchman, sir,” “ Porteghee, sir,” 
“ Dutchman, sir,” “ Prooshan, sir,” 
and other conflicting testimony, he now 
heard a feeble voice asking, both in 
Italian and in French, for water. A 
general remark going round, in reply, 
of “ Ah, poor fellow, he says he ’ll nev- 
er get over it ; and no wonder ! ” Clen- 
nam begged to be allowed to pass, as 
he understood the poor creature. He 
was immediately handed to the front 
to speak to him. 

“ First he wants some water,” said 
he, looking round. (A dozen good fel- 
lows dispersed to get it.) “Are you 
badly hurt, my friend?” he asked the 
man on the litter in Italian. 

“Yes, sir; yes, yes, yes. It’s my 
leg, it ’s my leg. But it pleases me to 
hear the old music, though I am very 
bad.” 

“You are a traveller? Stay! See 
the water! Let me give you some.” 

They had rested the litter on a pile of 
paving-stones. It was at a convenient 
height from the ground, and by stoop- 
ing he could lightly raise the head with 
one hand, and hold the glass to the 
lips with the other. A little, muscular, 
brown man, with black hair and white 
teeth. A lively face, apparently. Ear- 
rings in his ears. 

“That’s well. You are a travel- 
ler?” 

“ Surely, sir/’ 

“ A stranger in this city ? ” 


“ Surely, surely, altogether. I am ar- 
rived this unhappy evening.” 

“ From what country ? ” 

“ Marseilles.” 

“ Why, see there ! I also ! Almost 
as much a stranger here as you, though 
born here, I came from Marseilles a lit- 
tle while ago. Don’t be cast down.” 
The face looked up at him imploring- 
ly, as he rose from wiping it, and gen- 
tly replaced the coat that covered the 
writhing figure. “ I won’t leave you, 
till you shall be well taken care of. 
Courage ! You will be very much bet- 
ter half an hour hence.” 

“Ah ! Altro, altro !” cried the poor 
little man, in a faintly incredulous tone ; 
and, as they took him up, hung out his 
right hand to give the forefinger a back- 
handed shake in the air. 

Arthur Clennam turned ; and walking 
beside the litter, and saying an encour- 
aging word now and then, accompanied 
it to the neighboring hospital of Saint 
Bartholomew. None of the crowd but 
the bearers and he being admitted, the 
disabled man was seon laid on a table 
in a cool, methodical way, and careful- 
ly examined by a surgeon : who was as 
near at hand, and as ready to appear, 
as Calamity herself. “He hardly 
knows an English word,” said Clen- 
nam ; “ is he badly hurt? ” “ Let us 

know all about it first,” said the sur- 
geon, continuing his examination with 
a business-like delight in it, “ before 
we pronounce.” 

After trying the leg with a finger and 
two fingers, and one hand and two 
hands, and over and under, and up 
and down, and in this direction and in 
that, and approvingly remarking on 
the points of interest to another gen- 
tleman who joined him, the surgeon at 
last clapped the patient on the shoul- 
der, and said, “He won’t hurt. He’ll 
do very well. It’s difficult enough, 
but we shall not want him to part 
with his leg this time.” Which Clen- 
nam interpreted to the patient, who 
was full of gratitude, and, in his de- 
monstrative way, kissed both the in- 
terpreter’s hand and the surgeon’s sev- 
eral times. 

“ It ’s a serious injury, I suppose? ” 
said Clennam. 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


95 


“ Ye-es,” replied the surgeon, with 
the thoughtful pleasure of an artist, con- 
templating the work upon his easel, — 
“yes, it’s enough. There’s a com- 
pound fracture above the knee, and a 
dislocation below. They are both of a 
beautiful kind.” He gave the patient 
a friendly clap on the shoulder again, 
as if he really felt that he was a very 
good fellow indeed, and worthy of all 
commendation for having broken his 
leg in a manner interesting to science. 

“ He speaks French? ” said the sur- 
geon. 

“O yes, he speaks French.” 

“ He ’ll be at no loss here, then. — 
You have only to bear a little pain like 
a brave fellow, my friend, and to be 
thankful that all goes as well as it 
does,” he added, in that tongue, “ and 
you ’ll walk again to a marvel. Now, 
let us see whether there’s anything 
else the matter, and how our ribs are.” 

There was nothing else the matter, and 
our ribs were sound. Clennam remained 
until everything possible to be done had 
been skilfully and promptly done, — the 
poor belated wanderer in a strange land 
movingly besought that favor of him, — 
and lingered by the bed to which he 
was in due time removed, until he had 
fallen into a doze. Even then he wrote 
a few words for him on his card, with a 
promise to return to-morrow, and left it 
to be given to him when he should 
awake. 

All these proceedings occupied so 
long that it struck eleven o’clock at 
night as he came out at the Hospital 
Gate. He had hired a lodging for the 
present in Covent Garden, and he took 
the nearest way to that quarter, by 
Snow Hill and Holborn. 

Left to himself again, after the solici- 
tude and compassion of his last adven- 
ture, he was naturally in a thoughtful 
mood. As naturally, he could not walk 
on thinking for ten minutes without re- 
calling Flora. She necessarily recalled 
to him his life, with all its misdirection 
and little happiness. 

When he got tohislodging, hesatdown 
before the dying fire, as he had stood 
at the window of his old room looking 
out upon the blackened forest of chim- 
neys, and turned his gaze back upon 


the gloomy vista by which he had 
come to that stage in his existence. 
So long, so bare, so blank. No child- 
hood ; no youth, except for one re- 
membrance ; the one remembrance 
proved, only that day, to be a piece 
of folly. 

It was a misfortune to him, trifle as it 
might have been to another. For, 
while all that was hard and stern in his 
recollection remained Reality on being 
proved, — was obdurate to the sight 
and touch, and relaxed nothing of its 
old indomitable grimness, — the one 
tender recollection of his experience 
would not bear the same test, and 
melted away. He had foreseen this, 
on the former night, when he had 
dreamed with waking eyes ; but he had 
not felt it then ; and he had now. 

He was a dreamer in such wise, be- 
cause he was a man who had deep-root- 
ed in his nature a belief in all the gen- 
tle and good things his life had bee.n 
without. Bred in meanness and hard 
dealing, this had rescued him to be a 
man of honorable mind and open hand. 
Bred in coldness and severity, this had 
rescued him to have a warm and sym- 
pathetic heart. Bred in a creed too 
darkly audacious to pursue, through its 
process of reversing the making of man 
in the image of his Creator to the mak- 
ing of his Creator in the image of an 
erring man, this had rescued him to 
judge not, and in humility to be merci- 
ful, and have hope and charity. 

And this saved him still from the 
whimpering weakness and cruel selfish- 
ness of holding that because such a 
happiness or such a virtue had not 
come into his little path, or worked well 
for him, therefore it was not in the great 
scheme, but was reducible, when found 
in appearance, to the basest elements. 
A disappointed mind he had, but a 
mind too firm and healthy for such un- 
wholesome air. Leaving himself in the 
dark, it could rise into the light, seeing 
it shine on others, and hailing it. 

Therefore he sat before his dying 
fire, sorrowful to think upon the way by 
which he. had come to that night, yet 
not strewing poison on the way by 
which other men had come to it. That 
he should have missed so much, and at 


96 


LITTLE DORR IT. 


his time of life should look so far about 
him for any staff to bear him company 
upon his downward journey, and cheer 
it, was a just regret. He looked at the 
fire from which the blaze departed, from 
which the after-glow subsided, in which 
the ashes turned gray, from which they 
dropped to dust, and thought, “ How 
soon I too shall pass through such 
changes, and be gone ! ” 

To review his life was like descend- 
ing a green tree in fruit and flower, and 
seeing all the branches wither and drop 
off one by one as he came down to- 
wards them. 

“From .the unhappy suppression of 
my youngest days, through the rigid 
and unloving home that followed them, 
through my departure, my long exile, 
my return, my mother’s welcome, my 
intercourse with her since, down to the 
afternoon of this day with poor Flora,” 
said Arthur Clennam, “ what have I 
found ! ” 

His door was softly opened, and these 
spoken words startled him, and came as 
if they were an answer : — 

“ Little Dorrit.” 


CHAPTER XIV. 

LITTLE DORRIT’S PARTY. 

Arthur Clennam rose hastily, and 
saw her standing at the door. This 
history must sometimes see with Little 
Dorrit’s eyes, and shall begin that 
course by seeing him. 

Little Dorrit looked into a dim room, 
which seemed a spacious one to her, 
and grandly furnished. Courtly ideas 
of Covent Garden, as a place with fa- 
mous coffee-houses, where gentlemen 
wearing gold-laced coats and swords 
had quarrelled and fought duels ; costly 
ideas of Covent Garden, as a place 
where there were flowers in winter at 
guineas apiece, pineapples at guineas 
a pound, and peas at guineas a pint; 
picturesque ideas of Covent Garden, as 
a place where there was a mighty thea- 
tre, showing wonderful and beautiful 
sights to richly dressed ladies and gen- 
tlemen, and which was forever far be- 


yond the reach of poor Fanny or poor 
uncle ; desolate ideas of Covent Garden, 
as having all those arches in it, where 
the miserable children in ,rags among 
whom she had just now passed, like 
young rats, slunk and hid, fed on offal, 
huddled together for warmth, and were 
hunted about (look to the rats young 
and old, all ye Barnacles, for before 
God they are eating away our founda- 
tions, and will bring the roofs on our 
heads ! ) ; teeming ideas of Covent 
Garden, as a place of past and present 
mystery, romance, abundance, want, 
beauty, ugliness, fair country gardens, 
and foul street-gutters, all confused to- 
gether, — made the room dimmer than 
it was, in Little Dorrit’s eyes, as they 
timidly saw it from the door. 

At first in the chair before the gone- 
out fire, and then turned round wonder- 
ing to see her, was the gentleman whom 
she sought. The brown, grave gentle- 
man, who smiled so pleasantly, who 
was so frank and considerate in his 
manner, and yet in whose earnestness 
there was something that reminded her 
of his mother, with the great difference 
that she was earnest in asperity and he 
in gentleness. Now he regarded her 
with that attentive and inquiring look 
before which Little Dorrit’s eyes had 
always fallen, and before which they 
fell still. 

“ My poor child ! Here at mid- 
night? ” 

“ I said Little Dorrit, sir, on purpose 
to prepare you. I knew you must be 
very much surprised.” 

“ Are you alone ? ” 

“ No, sir, I have got Maggy with 
me.” 

Considering her entrance sufficiently 
prepared for by this mention of her 
name, Maggy appeared from the land- 
ing outside, on the broad grin. She 
instantly suppressed that manifestation, 
however, and became fixedly solemn. 

“ And I have no fire,” said Clennam. 
“And you are — ” He was going to 
say so lightly clad, but stopped himself 
in what would have been a reference to 
her poverty, saying instead, “And it is 
so cold.” 

Putting the chair from which he-had 
risen nearer to the grate, he made her 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


97 


sit down in it ; and hurriedly bringing 
wood and coal, heaped them together 
and gOt^a blazjel 

“Your foot is Hke marble, my child,” 
— he had happened to iouch it, while 
stooping on one knee at his work of 
kindling the fire,, — “ puf it nearer the 
warmth.” Little Dorrit thanked him 
hastily. It was quite warm, it was 
very warm ! It smote upon his heart 
to feel that she hid her thin, worn shoe. 

Little Dorrit was not ashamed of her 
poor shoes. He knew her story, and it 
was not that. Little Dorrit had a mis- 
giving that he might blame her father 
if he saw them ; that he might think, 
“ Why did he dine to-day, and leave 
this little creature to the mercy of the 
cold stones ! ” She had no belief tliat 
it would have been a just reflection ; 
she simply knew, by experience, that 
such delusions did sometimes present 
themselves to people. It was a part 
of her father’s misfortunes that they 
did. 

“ Before I say anything else,” Little 
Dorrit began, sitting before the pale 
fire, and raising her eyes again to the 
face which in its harmonious look of 
interest, and pity, and protection, she 
felt to be a mystery far above her in 
degree, and almost removed beyond her 
guessing at, “ may I tell you some- 
thing, sir?” 

“ Yes, my child.” 

A slight shade of distress fell upon 
her at his so often calling her a child. 
She was surprised that he should see 
it, or think of such a slight thing ; but 
he said directly, — 

“ I wanted a tender word, and could 
think of no other. As you just now gave 
yourself the name they give you at my 
mother’s, and as that is the name by 
which I always think of you, let me 
call you Little Dorrit.” 

“ Thank you, sir, I should like it 
better than any name.” 

“ Little Dorrit.” 

“ Little mother,” Maggy (who had 
been falling asleep) put in, as a correc- 
tion. 

“ It ’s all the same, Maggy,” returned 
Dorrit, “all the same.” 

“ Is it all the same, mother? ” 

“Just the same.” 


Maggy laughed, and immediately 
snored. In Little Dorrit’s eyes and 
ears, the uncouth figure and the uncouth 
sound were as pleasant as could be. 
There was a glow of pride in her big 
child overspreading her face, when it 
again met the eyes of the grave brown 
gentleman. She wondered what he 
was thinking of, as he looked at Maggy 
and her. She thought what a good 
father he would be. How, with some 
such look, he would counsel and cher- 
ish his daughter. 

“ What I was going to tell you, sir,” 
said Little Dorrit, “is, that. my brother 
is at large.” 

Arthur was rejoiced to hear it, and 
hoped he would do well. 

“ And what I was going to tell you, 
sir,” said Little Dorrit, trembling in all 
her little figure and in her voice, “ is, 
that I am not to know whose generos- 
ity released him, — am never to ask, 
and am never to be told, and am never 
to thank that gentleman with all my 
grateful heart ! ” 

He would probably need no thanks, 
Clennam said. Very likely he would 
be thankful himself (and with reason), 
that he had had the means and chance 
of doing a little service to her who well 
deserved a great one. 

“And what I was going to say, sir, 
is,” said Little Dorrit, trembling more 
and more, “that if I knew him, and I 
might, I would tell him that he can 
never, never know how I feel his good- 
ness, and how my good father would 
feel it. And what I was going to say, 
sir, is, that if 1 knew him, and I might 
— but I don’t know him and I must 
not — I know that ! — I would tell him 
that I shall never any more lie down to 
sleep without having prayed to Heaven 
to bless him and reward him. And 
if I knew him, and I might, I would go 
down on my knees to him, and take 
his hand and kiss it, and ask him not to 
draw it away, but to leave it, — O to 
leave it for a moment, — and let my 
thankful tears fall on it, for I have no 
other thanks to give him ! ” 

Little Dorrit had put his hand to her 
lips, and would have kneeled to him ; 
but he gently prevented her and re- 
placed her in her chair. Her eyes and 


7 


9 8 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


the tones of her voice had thanked him 
far better than she thought. He was 
not able to say, quite as composedly as 
usual, “ There, Little Dorrit, there, 
there, there ! We will suppose that 
you did know this person, and that you 
might do all this, and that it was all 
done. And now tell me who am quite 
another person — who am nothing more 
than the friend who begged you to trust 
him— why you are out at midnight, 
and what it is that brings you so far 
through the streets at this late hour, 
my slight, delicate,” child was on his 
lips again, “ Little Dorrit ! ” 

“ Maggy and I have been to-night,” 
she answered, subduing herself with 
the quiet effort that had long been natu- 
ral to her, “to the theatre where my 
sister is engaged.” 

“And O, ain’t it a Ev’nly place,” 
suddenly interrupted Maggy, who 
seemed to have the power of going to 
sleep and waking up whenever she 
chose. “ Almost as good as a hospital. 
Only there ain’t no Chicking in it.” 

Here she shook herself, and fell 
asleep again. 

“ We went there,” said Little Dorrit, 
glancing at her charge, “because I like 
sometimes to know, of my own knowl- 
edge, that my sister is doing well ; and 
like to see her there, with my own eyes, 
when neither she nor uncle is aware. 
It is very seldom indeed that I can do 
that, because when I am not out at 
work I am with my father, and even 
when I am out at work I hurry home to 
him. But I pretend to-night that I am 
at a party.” 

As she made the confession, timidly 
hesitating, she raised her eyes to the 
face, and read its expression so plainly 
that she answered it. 

“ O no, certainly ! I never was at a 
party in my life.” 

She paused a little under his atten- 
tive look, and then said, “ I hope there 
is no harm in it. I could never have 
been of any use, if I had not pretended 
a little.” 

She feared that he was blaming her 
in his mind for so devising to contrive 
for them, think for them, and watch 
over them, without their knowledge or 
gratitude ; perhaps even with their re- 


proaches for supposed neglect. But 
what was really in his mind was the 
weak figure with its strong purpose, the 
thin worn shoes, the insufficient dress, 
and the pretence of recreation and en- 
joyment. He asked where the supposi- 
titious party was? At a place where 
she worked, answered Little Dorrit, 
blushing. She had said very little 
about it : only a few words to make her 
father easy. Her father did not be- 
lieve it to be a grand party, — indeed he 
might suppose that. And she glanced 
for an instant at the shawl she wore. 

“ It is the first night,” said Little 
Dorrit, “ that I have ever been away 
from home. And London looks so 
large, so barren, and so wild.” In Lit- 
tle Dorrit’s eyes its vastness under the 
black sky was awful ; a tremor passed 
over her as she said the words. 

“ But this is not,” she added, with 
the quiet effort again, “ what I have 
come to trouble you with, sir. My sis- 
ter’s having found a friend, a lady she 
has told me of and made me rather 
anxious about, was the first cause 
of my coming away from home. And 
being away, and coming (on purpose) 
round by where you lived, and seeing a 
light in the window — ” 

Not for the first time. No, not for 
the first time. In Little Dorrit’s eyes, 
the outside of that window had been a 
distant star on other nights than this. 
She had toiled out of her way, tired and 
troubled, to look up at it, and wonder 
about the grave, brown gentleman from 
so far off who had spoken to her as a 
friend and protector. 

“There were three things,” said Lit- 
tle Dorrit, “ that I thought I would like 
to say, if you were alone and I might 
come up stairs. First, what I have 
tried to say, but never can — never 
shall—” 

“ Hush, hush ! That is done with, 
and disposed of. Let us pass to the sec- 
ond,” said Clennam, smiling her agita- 
tion away, making the blaze shine upon 
her, and putting wine and cake and fruit 
towards her on the table. 

“ I think,” said Little Dorrit, — “this 
is the second thing, sir, — I think Mrs. 
Clennam must have found out my se- 
cret, and must know where I come from 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


99 


and where I go to. Where I live, I 
mean.” 

“ Indeed?” returned Clennam, quick- 
ly. He asked her, after a short consid- 
eration, why she supposed so. 

“ I think,” replied Little Dorrit, “ that 
Mr. Flintwinch must have watched 
me.” 

And why, Clennam asked, as he 
turned his eyes upon the fire, bent his 
brows, and considered again, — why did 
she suppose that ? 

“ I have met him twice. Both times 
near home. Both times at night, when 
I was going back. Both times I thought 
(though that may easily be my mistake), 
that he hardly looked as if he had met 
me by accident.” 

“ Did he say anything ? ” 

“No; he only nodded and put his 
head on one side.” 

“ The Devil take his head ! ” mused 
Clennam, still looking at the fire ; “ it ’s 
always on one side.” 

He roused himself to persuade her to 
put some wine to her lips, and to touch 
something to eat, — it was very difficult, 
she was so timid and shy, — and then 
said, musing again, — 

“Is my mother at all changed to 
you ? ” 

“ O, not at all. She is just the 
same. I wondered whether I had bet- 
ter tell her my history. I wondered 
whether I might, — I mean, whether 
you would like me to tell her. I won- 
dered,” said Little Dorrit, looking at 
him in a suppliant way, and gradually 
withdrawing her eyes as he looked at 
her, “ whether you would advise me 
what I ought to do.” 

“ Little Dorrit,” said Clennam ; and 
the phrase had already begun, between 
those two, to stand for a hundred gentle 
phrases, according to the varying tone 
and connection in which it was used ; 
“ do nothing. I will have some talk 
with my old friend, Mrs. Affery. Do 
nothing, Little Dorrit, — except refresh 
yourself with such means as there are 
here. I entreat you to do that.” 

“Thankyou, I am not hungry. Nor,” 
said Little Dorrit, as he softly put 
her glass towards her, “ nor thirsty. I 
think Maggy might like something, per- 
haps.” 


“ We will make her find pockets pres- 
ently for all there is here,” said Clen- 
nam ; “ but before we awake her, there 
was a third thing to say.” 

“Yes. You will not be offended, 
sir ? ” 

“ I promise that, unreservedly.” 

“It will sound strange. I hardly 
know bow to say it. Don’t think it un- 
reasonable or ungrateful in me,” said 
Little Dorrit, with returning and in- 
creasing agitation. 

“ No, no, no. I am sure it will be 
natural and right. I am not afraid that 
I shall put a wrong construction on it, 
whatever it is.” 

“ Thank you. You are coming back 
to see my father again? ” 

“Yes.” 

“ You have been so good and thought- 
ful as to write him a note, saying that 
you are coming to-morrow ? ” 

“O, that was nothing ! Yes.” 

“ Can you guess,” said Little Dorrit, 
folding her small hands tight in one 
another, and looking at him with all 
the earnestness of her soul looking 
steadily out of her eyes, “what I am 
going to ask you not to do?” 

“ I think I can. But I may be 
wrong.” 

“No, you are not wrong,” said Little 
Dorrit, shaking her head. “ If we 
should want it so very, very badly that 
we cannot do without it, let me ask you 
for it.” 

“ I will, — I will.” > 

“ Don’t encourage him to ask. Don’t 
understand him, if he does ask. Don’t 
give it to him. Save him and spare 
him that, and you will be able to think 
better of him ! ” 

Clennam said — not very plainly, see- 
ing those tears glistening in her anxious 
eyes — that her wish should be sacred 
with him. 

“You don’t know what he is,” sho 
said; “you don’t know what he really 
is. How can you, seeing him there all 
at once, dear love, and not gradually, 
as I have done ! You have been so 
good to us, so delicately and truly good, 
that I want him to be better in your 
, eyes than in anybody’s. And I cannot 
Tear to think,” cried Little Dorrit, 
! cqVeiing her tears with her hands, — “ I 
> 1 1 


lOO 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


cannot bear to think that you of all the 
world should see him in his only mo- 
ments of degradation ! ” 

“ Pray,” said Clennam, “ do not be 
so distressed. Pray, pray, Little Dor- 
rit ! This is quite understood now.” 

“Thank you, sir. Thank you! I 
have tried very much to keep myself 
from saying this ; I have thought about 
it, days and nights ; but when I knew 
for certain you were coming again, I 
made up my mind to speak to you. 
Not bemuse I am ashamed of him,” 
she dried her tears quickly, “but be- 
cause I know him better than any one 
does, and love him, and am proud of 
him.” 

Relieved of this weight, Little Dorrit 
was nervously anxious to be gone. 
Maggy being broad awake, and in the 
act of distantly gloating over the fruit 
and cakes with chuckles of anticipation, 
Clennam made the best diversion in his 
power by pouring her out a glass of 
wine, which she drank in a series of 
loud smacks; putting her hand upon 
her windpipe after every one, and say- 
ing, breathless, with her eyes in a 
prominent state, “ O, ain’t it d’licious ! 
Ain’t it hospitally ! ” When she had 
finished the wine and these encomiums, 
he charged her to load her basket (she 
was never without her basket) with 
every eatable thing upon the table, and 
to take especial care to leave no scrap 
behind. Maggy’s pleasure in doing 
this, and her little mother’s pleasure 
in seeing Maggy pleased, was as good 
a turn as circumstances could have 
given to the late conversation. 

“ But the gates will have been locked 
long ago,” said Clennam, suddenly 
remembering it. “ Where are you 
going? ” 

“I am going to Maggy’s lodging,” 
answered Little Dorrit. “ I shall be 
quite safe, quite well taken care of.” 

“ I must accompany you there,” said 
Clennam. “ I cannot let you go alone.” 

“Yes, pray leave us to go there by 
ourselves. Pray do!” begged Little 
Dorrit. 

She was so earnest in the petition, 
that Clennam felt a delicacy in obtrud- 
ing himself upon her; the rather, be- 
cause he could well understand- that 


Maggy’s lodging was of the obscurest 
sort. “Come, Maggy,” said Little 
Dorrit, cheerily, “ we shall do very 
well ; we know the way, by this time, 
Maggy?” 

“Yes, yes, little mother; we know 
the way,” chuckled Maggy. And away 
they went. Little Dorrit turned at 
the door to say, “God bless you!” 
She said it very softly, but perhaps she 
may have been as audible above — who 
knows ! — as a whole cathedral choir. 

Arthur Clennam suffered them to 
pass the corner of the street, before he 
followed at a distance ; not with any 
idea of encroaching a second time on 
Little Dorrit’s privacy, but to satisfy 
his mind by seeing her secure in the 
neighborhood to which she was accus- 
tomed. So diminutive she looked, so 
fragile and defenceless against the 
bleak damp weather, flitting along in 
the shuffling shadow of her charge, 
that he felt, in his compassion, and in 
his habit of considering her a child 
apart from the rest of the rough world, 
as if he would have been glad to take 
her up in his arms and carry her to 
her journey’s end. 

In course of time she came into the 
leading thoroughfare where the Mar- 
shalsea was, and then he saw them 
slacken their pace, and soon turn down 
a by-street. He stopped, felt that he 
had no right to go farther, and slowly 
left them. He had no suspicion that 
they ran any risk of being houseless 
until morning ; had no idea of the truth, 
until long, long. afterwards. 

But, said Little Dorrit, when they 
stopped at a poor dwelling all in dark- 
ness, and heard no sound on listening 
at the door, “ Now, this is a good lodg- 
ing for you, Maggy, and we must not 
give offence. Consequently, we will 
only knock twice, and not very loud; 
and if we cannot wake them so, we 
must walk about till day.” 

Once, Little Dorrit knocked with a 
careful hand, and listened. Twice, 
Little . Dorrit knocked with a careful 
hand, and listened. All was close and 
still. “ Maggy, we must do the best 
we can, my dear. We must be patient, 
and wait for day.” 

It was a chill dark night, with a 




























































































































































































































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: 



































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* 













LITTLE DORR IT AND MAGGY. 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


ioi 


damp wind blowing, when they came 
out into the leading street again, and 
heard the clocks strike half past one. 

“ In only five hours and a half,” said 
Little Dorrit, “ we shall be able to go 
home.” To speak of home, and to go 
and look at it, it being so near, was a 
natural sequence. They went to the 
closed gate, and peeped through into 
the court-yard. “ I hope he is sound 
asleep,” said Little-JDorrit, kissing one 
of the bars, “ ancHfroes not miss me.” 

The gate was so familiar, and so like 
a companion, that they put down Mag- 
gy’s basket in a corner to serve for a 
seat, and, keeping close together, rested 
there for some time. While the street 
was empty and silent, Little Dorrit was 
not afraid ; but when she heard a foot- 
step at a distance, or saw a moving 
shadow among the street lamps, she 
was startled, and whispered, “ Maggy, 

I see some one. Come away ! ” Mag- 
gy would then wake up more or less 
fretfully, and they would wander about 
a little, and come back again. 

As long as eating was a novelty and 
an amusement, Maggy kept up pretty 
well. But that period going by, she 
became querulous about the cold, and 
sheltered and whimpered. “ It will 
soon be over, dear,” said Little Dorrit, 
patiently. “ O, it p all very fine for you, 
little mother,” returned Maggy, “but 
I ’m a poor thing, only ten years old.” 

At last, in the dead of the night, when 
the street was very still indeed, Little 
Dorrit laid the heavy head upon her 
bosom, and soothed her to sleep. 
And thus she sat at the gate, as it were 
alone ; looking up at the stars, and see- 
ing the clouds pass over them ki their 
wild flight, — which was the dance at 
Little Dorrit’s party. 

“ If it really was a party ! ” | she 
thought once, as she sat there. “ If it 
was light and warm and beautiful, and f 
it was our house, and my poor dear was\j 
its master, and had n^uer been inside -j 
these walls. And if Mr. Clennam was * 
one of our visito rs, ancl we were dan- 
cing to dej^ghtful music, and were all as 
ay and light-hearted as ever w$. could 
e! I wonder — ” Such askta of 
wonder opened out before her, that she 
sat looking up at the stars, quite lost ; 1 


until Maggy was querulous again, and 
wanted to get up and walk. 

Three o’clock, and half past three, 
and they had passed over London 
Bridge. They had heard the rush of 
the tide against obstacles ; had looked 
down, awed, through the dark vapor on 
the river ; had seen little spots of light- 
ed water where the bridge lamps were 
reflected, shining like demon eyes, with 
a terrible fascination in them for guilt 
and misery. They had shrunk past 
homeless people, lying coiled up in 
nooks. They had run from drunkards. 
They had started from slinking men, 
whistling and signing to one another at 
by-corners, or running away at full 
speed. Though everywhere the leader 
and the guide, Little Dorrit, happy 
for once in her youthful appearance, 
feigned to cling to and rely upon Mag- 
gy. And more than once some voice, 
from among a knot of brawling or 
prowding figures in their path, had 
called out to the rest, to “ let the* wo- 
man and the child go by ! ” 

So the woman and the child had 
gone by, and gone on, and five had 
sounded from the steeples. They were 
walking slowly towards the east, al- 
ready looking for the first pale streak of 
day, when a woman came after them. 

“What are you doing with the child ? ” 
s hesajd to Maggy. 

She was young, — far _tp^.yqyngto be 
there, Heaven knows! — and neither 
ugly nor wicked-looking. She spoke 
coarsely, but with no naturally coareP 
voice ; there was even something mu- 
sical in its sound. 

“ What are you doing with yourself? ” 
retorted Maggy, for want of a better 
answer. 

“Can’t you see, without my telling 
you ^ ^ 

“ I don’t know as I can,” said 
Maggy. 

“ Killing myself. Now I have an- 
swered you, answer me. What are you 
doing with the child ?” 

•‘The supposed child kept her head 
drooped down, and kept her form close 
at Maggy’s side. 

“Poor thing!” said the woman, “have 
you no feeling, that you keep her out in 
the cruel streets at such a time as this ? 


102 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


Have you no eyes, that you don’t see 
how delicate and slender she is ? Have 
you no sense (you don’t look as if you 
had much), that you don’t take more 
pity on this cold and trembling little 
hand?” 

She had stepped across to that side, 
and held the hand between her own 
two, chafing it. “ Kiss a poor lost 
creature, dear,” she said, bending her 
face, “and tell me where she ’s taking 
you.” 

Little Dorrit turned towards her. 

“ Why, my God ! ” she said, recoiling, 
“ you ’re a woman ! ” 

“ Don’t mind that ! ” said Little Dor- 
rit, clasping one of the hands that had 
suddenly released hers. “ I am not 
afraid of you.” 

“ Then you had better be,” she an- 
swered. “ Have you no mother? ” 

“ No.” 

“No father?” 

‘lYes, a very dear one.” 

“ Go home to him, and be afraid of 
me. Let me go. Good night ! ” 

“ I must thank you first ; let me speak 
to you as if I really were a child.” 

“ You can’t do it,” said the woman. 
“ You are kind and innocent ; but you 
can’t look at me out of a child’s eyes. 

I never should have touched you, but I 
thought that you were a child.” And 
with a strange, wild cry, she^went 

No day yet inthe sky, butthere wasday 
in the i%soundTng "stones of the streets ; 
In the wagons, carts, and coaches ; in 
the workers going to various occupa- 
tions ; in the opening of early shops ; in 
the traffic at markets ; in the stir of the 
river-side. There was coming day in 
the flaring lights, with a feebler color in 
them than they would have had at an% 
other time, — coming day in the in- 
creased sharpness of the air, and the 
ghastly dying of the night. 

They w'ent back again to the gate, in- 
tending to wait there now until it should 
be opened ; but the air was so raw and 
cold, that Little Dorrit, leading Maggy 
about in her sleep, kept in motion. Go^ 
ing round by the church, she saw lights 
there, and the door open ; and went up 
the, steps, and looked in. 

“Who’s that?” cried a stout old 


man, who was putting on a nightcap as 
if he were going to bed in a vault. 

“ It ’s no one particular, sir,” said 
Little Dorrit. 

“ Stop ! ” cried the man. “ Let ’s 
have a look at you ! ” 

This caused her to turn back again, 
in the act of going out, and to present 
herself and her charge before him. 

“ I thought so ! ” said he. “ I know 
you .” ^ 

“ We have often^feeen each other,” 
said Little Dorrit, recognizing the sex- 
ton, or the beadle, or the verger, or 
whatever he was, “when I have been 
at church here.” 

“ More than that, we ’ve got your 
birth in our Register, you know ; you ’re 
one of our curiosities.” 

“ Indeed? ” said Little Dorrit. 

“To be sure. As the child of the — 
by the by, how did you get out so 
early? ” 

“We were shut out last night, and 
are waiting to get in.” 

•/“ You don’t mean it? And there ’s 
another hour good yet ! Come into the 4 
vestry. You’ll find a fire in the vestry, 
on account of the painters. I ’m wait- 
ing for the painters, or I should nil be 
here, you may depend upon it. O* of 
our curiosities mustn’t be cold, when 
we have it in our pAtver to warm her 
up comfortable. Come along.” 

He was a very good old fellow, in his 
familiar way ; and having stirred the vesv* 
try fire, he looked round the shelves o£ 
registers for a particular volume. “ Here , 
you are, you see,” he said, taking it 
down and turning the leaves. “ Here 
you ’ll find yourself as large as life., 
Amy, daughter of William and Fanny 
Dorrit. Born, Marsjialsea Prison, Par- 
ish of St. George. And we tell people 
that you have lived there, without so , 
much as a day’s or a night’s absence J 
Ipve r since. Is it true ? ” 
j jr “Quite true, till last night.” 

“ Lord ! ” J|nt his surveying her ’ 
with an admiring gaze suggested some- 
thing else to hiln, to wit : “ I am sorry 
\ to seeythough, that you are .faint and 
tired. 'Stay a bit. I ’ll get some cush- 
ions mk of the church, and you and 
your friend shall lie down before the fire. 
Don’t be afraid of not going in to join 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


103 


your father when the gate opens, /’ll 
call you.” 

He soon brought in the cushions, 
and strewed them on the ground. 

“ There you are, you see. Again as 
large as life. O, never mind thanking. 
I ’ve daughters of my own. And though 
they weren’t born in the Marshalsea 
Prison, they might have been, if I had 
been, in my ways of carrying on, of 
your father’s breed. Stop a bit. I 
must put something under the cushion 
for your head. Here ’s a burial volume. 
Just the thing ! We have got Mrs. 
Bangham in this book. But what 
makes these books interesting to most 
people is — not who’s in ’em, but who 
is n’t — who ’s coming, you know, and 
when. That ’s the interesting ques- 
tion.” 

Commendingly looking back at the 
pillow he had improvised, he left them 
to their hour’s repose. Maggy was 
.snoring already, and Little Domt was 
soon fast asleep, with her head resting 
on that sealed book of Fate, untroubled 
by its mysterious blank leaves. 

This was Little Dorrit’s party. The 
shame, desertion, wretchedness, and 
exposure of the great capital ; the wet, 
the q^ld, the slow hours, and the swift 
clouds of the dismal night. This was 
the party from which Little Dorrit 
went home, jaded, in the first gray mist 
of a rainy morning. 


CHAPTER XV. 

MRS. FLINTWINCH HAS ANOTHER 
DREAM. 

The debilitated old house in the city, 
wrapped in its mantle of soot, and lean- 
i ing heavily on the crutches that had 
partaken of its decay and worn out with 
f ‘if, never knew a healthy or a cheerful 
f interval, let what w r ould betide. If the 
sun ever touched it, it was but with a 
ray, and that was gone in half an hour ; 

I if the moonlight ever fell upon it, it was 
only to put a few patches on its doleful 
i:V cloak, and make it look more wretched. 
9 The stars, to be sure, coldly watched 
j* it when the nights and the smoke were 


clear enough ; and all bad weather 
stood by it with a rare fidelity. You 
should alike find rain, hail^frost, and 
thaw lingering-in that dismal enclosure 
when they had vanished from other 
places ; and as to snow, you should see 
it there for weeks, long after it had 
changed from yellow to black, slowly 
weeping away its grimy life. The place 
had no other adherents. As to street 
nflises, the rumbling of wheels in the 
lane merely rushed in at the gateway in 
going past, and rushed out again, mak- 
ing the listening Mistress Affery feel as 
if she were deaf and recovered the 
sense of hearing by instantaneous 
flashesi So with whistling, singing, 
talking, laughing, and all pleasant hu- 
man sounds. They leaped the gap in 
a moment, and went upon their way. 

The varying light of fire and candle 
in Mrs. Clennam’s room made the 
greatest change that ever broke the 
dead monotony of the spot. In her 
two long, narrow windows the fire 
shone sullenly all day and sullenly all 
night. On rare occasions it flashed up 
passionatelv, as she did ; but for the 
most part it was suppressed, like her, 
and preyed upon itself evenly and slow- 
ly. During many hours of the short 
winter days, however, when it was dusk 
there early in the afternoon, changing 
distortions of herself in her wheeled- 
chair, of Mr. Flintwinch with his w'ry 
neck, of Mistress Affery coming and 
going, would be thrown upon the house 
wall that was over the gateway, and 
would hover there like shadows from a 
great magic lantern. As the room- 
ridden invalid settled for the night, 
these would gradually disappear, — 
Mistress Affery’s magnified shadow al- 
ways flitting about last, until it finally 
glided away into the air, as though she 
were off upon a witch excursion. Then 
the solitary light would burn unchan- 
gingly, until it burned pale before the 
dawn, and at last died under the breath 
of Mistress Affery, as her shadow de- 
scended on it from the witch region 
of sleep. 

Strange, if the little sick-room fire 
were in effect a beacon fire, summoning 
some one, and that the most unlikely 
some one in the world, to the spot that 


104 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


must be come to. Strange, if the little 
sick-room light were in effect a watch- 
light, burning in that place every night 
until an appointed event should be 
watched out ! Which of the vast mul- 
titude of travellers, under the sun and 
the stars, climbing the dusty hills and 
toiling along the weary plains, journey- 
ing by lahd and journeying by sea, com- 
ing and going so strangely, to meet and 
to act and react on one another, which 
of the host may, with no suspicion of 
the journey’s end, be travelling surely 
hither? 

Time shall show us. The post of 
honor and the post of shame, the gen- 
eral’s station and the drummer’s, a 
peer’s statue in Westminster Abbey 
and a seaman’s hammock in the bosom 
of the deep, the mitre and the work- 
house, the woolsack and the gallows, 
the throne and the guillotine, — the 
travellers to all are on the great high- 
road ; but it has wonderful divergences, 
and only Time shall, show -us whither 
each traveller is bound. 

On a wintry afternoon at twilight, 
Mrs. Flint winch, having been heavy all 
day, dreamed this dream : — 

She thought she was in the kitchen 
getting the kettle ready for tea, and was 
warming herself with her feet upon the 
fender and the skirt of her gown tucked 
up, before the collapsed fire in the mid- 
dle of the grate, bordered on either 
hand by a deep, cold, black ravine. 
She thought that, as she sat thus, musing 
upon the question, whether life was not 
for some people a rather dull inven- 
tion, she was frightened by a sudden 
noise behind her. She thought that she 
had been similarly frightened once last 
week, and that the noise was of a mys- 
terious kind, — a sound of rustling, and 
of three or four quick beats like a rapid 
step ; while a shock or tremble was 
communicated to her heart, as if the 
step had shaken the floor, or even as if 
she had been touched by some awful 
hand. She thought that this revived 
within her certain old fears of hers that 
the house was haunted ; and that she flew 
up the kitchen stairs, without knowing 
hofv she got up, to be nearer company. 

Mistress Affery thought that, on reach- 
ing the hal% she saw the door of her 


liege lord’s office standing open, and the 
room empty. That she went to the 
ripped-up window, in the little room by 
the street door, to connect her palpitat- 
ing heart, through the glass, with living 
things beyond and outside the haunted 
house. That she then saw, on the wall 
over the gateway, the shadows of the 
two clever ones in conversation above. 
That she then went up stairs with her 
shoes in her hand, partly to be near the 
clever ones as a match for most ghosts, 
and partly to hear what they were talk- 
ing about. 

“ None of your nonsense with me,” 
said Mr. Flint winch. “ I won’t take it 
from you.” 

Mrs. Flintwinch dreamed that she 
stood behind the door, which was just 
ajar, and most distinctly heard her hus- 
band say these bold words. 

“ Flintwinch,” returned Mrs. Clen- 
nam, in her usual strong low voice, 
“ there is a demon of anger in you. 
Guard against it.” 

“ I don’t care whether there ’s one or 
a dozen,” said Mr.«0Flintwinch, forci- 
bly suggesting in his tone that the 
higher number was nearer the mark. 
“ If there was fifty, they should all say, 
None of your nonsense with me, I wion’t 
take it from you, — I ’d make ’em say it, 
whether they liked if or not.” 

“ What have I done, you wrathful 
man ? ” her strong voice asked. 

“Done?” said Mr. Flintwinch. 
“ Dropped down upon me.” 

“If you mean remonstrated with 
you — ” 

“ Don’t put words in my mouth that 
I don’t mean,” said Jeremiah, sticking 
to his figurative expression with tena- 
cious and impenetrable obstinacy; “ I 
mean dropped down upon me.” 

“I remonstrated with you,” she be- 
gan again, “ because — ” 

“ I won’t have it ! ” cried Jeremiah. 
“You dropped down upon me.” 

“ I dropped down upon you, then, you 
ill-conditioned man,” (Jeremiah chuck- 
led at having forced her to adopt his 
phrase,) “ for having been needlessly 
significant to Arthur that morning. I 
have a right to complain of it as almost 
a breach of confidence. You did not 
mean it — ” 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


“ I won’t have it ! ” interposed the 
contradictory Jeremiah, flinging back 
the concession. “I did mean it.” 

“ I suppose I must leave you to speak 
in soliloquy, if you choose,” she replied, 
after a pause that seemed an angry one. 
“It is useless my addressing myself to 
a rash and headstrong old man who has 
a set purpose not to hear me.” 

“ Now, I won’t take that from you, 
either,” said Jeremiah. “I have no 
such purpose. I have told you I did 
mean it. Do you wish to know why I 
meant it, you rash and headstrong old 
woman ? ” 

“ After all, you only restore me my 
own w'ords,” she said, struggling with 
her indignation. “ Yes.” 

“This is why, then. Because you 
hadn’t cleared his father to him, and 
you ought to have done it. Because, 
before you w’ent into any tantrum about 
yourself, who are — ” 

“ Hold there, Flintwinch ! ” she cried 
out in a changed voice : “you may go 
a word too far.” 

The old man seemed to think so. 
There was another pause, and he had 
altered his position in the room, when 
he spoke again more mildly : — 

“ I was going to tell you why it w'as. 
Because, before you took your own 
part, I thought you ought to have taken 
the part of Arthur’s father ! Arthur’s 
father ! I had no particular love for 
Arthur’s father. I served Arthur’s fa- 
ther’s uncle, in this house, when Ar- 
thur’s father was not much above me, 

— was poorer as far as his pocket w r ent, 

— and when his uncle might as soon 
have left me his heir as have left him. 
He starved in the parlor, and I starved 
in the kitchen ; that was the principal 
difference in our positions ; there was 
not much more than a flight of break- 
neck stairs between us. I never took 
to him in those times ; I don’t know 
that I ever took to him greatly at any 
time. He was an undecided, irresolute 
chap, w'ho had had everything but his 
orphan life scared out of him when he 
w'as young. And when he brought you 
home here, the wife his uncle had 
named for him, I did n’t need to look at 
you twice (you were a good-looking 
woman at that time) to know who ’d be 


master. You have stood of your own 
strength ever since. Stand of your own 
strength now. Don’t lean against the 
dead.” 

“ I do not — as you call it — lean 
against the dead.” 

“But you had a mind to do it, if I 
had submitted,” growled Jeremiah, 
“ and that ’s why you drop down upon 
me. You can’t forget that I didn’t 
submit. I suppose you are astonished 
that I should consider it worth my 
while to have justice done to Arthur’s 
father ? Hey ? It does n’t matter 
whether you answer or not, because I 
know you are, and you know you are. 
Come, then, I ’ll tell you how it is. 
I may be a bit of an oddity in point 
of temper, but this is my temper, — I 
can’t let anybody have entirely their 
own way. You are a determined wo- 
man, and a clever woman ; and when 
you see your purpose before you, noth- 
ing will turn you from it. Who knows 
that better than I do ? ” 

“ Nothing will turn me from it, Flint - 
w'inch, when I have justified it to my- 
self. Add that.” 

“ Justified it to yourself? I said you 
svere the most determined woman on 
the face of the earth (or I meant to say 
so), and if you are determined to justify 
any object you entertain, of course 
you ’ll do it.” 

“ Man ! I justify myself by the au- 
thority of these Books,” she cried, w'ith 
stern emphasis, and appearing from the 
sound that followed to strike the dead- 
weight of her arm upon the table. 

“ Never mind that,” returned Jere- 
miah, . calmly, “we W'on’t enter into that 
question at present. However that 
may be, you carry out your purposes, 
and you make everything go down be- 
fore them. Now, I won’t go down be- 
fore them. I have been faithful to you, 
and useful to you, and I am attached to 
you. But I can’t consent, and I w'on’t 
consent, and I never did consent, and I 
never will consent, to be lost in you. 
Sw'allow up everybody else, and wel- 
come. The peculiarity of my temper 
is, ma’am, that I won’t be swallowed 
up alive.” 

Perhaps this had originally been the 
main-spring of the understanding be- 


io6 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


tween them. Descrying thus much of 
force of character in Mr. Flintwinch, 
perhaps Mrs. Clennam had deemed alli- 
ance with him worth her while. 

“ Enough and more than ^enough of 
the subject,” said she, gloomily. 

“ Unless you drop down upon me 
again,” returned the persistent Flint- 
winch, “ and then you must expect to 
hear of it again.” 

Mistress Affery dreamed that the 
figure of her lord here began walking 
up and down the room, as if to cool his 
spleen, and that she ran away ; but 
that, as he did not issue forth when she 
had stood listening and trembling in 
the shadowy hall a little time, she crept 
up stairs again, impelled as before by 
ghosts and curiosity, and once more 
cowered outside the door. 

“ Please to light the candle, Flint- 
winch,” Mrs. Clennam was saying, 
apparently wishing to draw him back 
into their usual tone." “It is nearly 
time for tea. Little Dorrit is coming, 
and will find me in the dark.” 

Mr. Flintwinch lighted the candle 
briskly, and said, as he put it down 
upon the table, — 

“ What are you going to do with Little 
Dorrit? Is she to come to work here 
forever? To come to tea here forever ? 
To come backwards and forwards here, 
in the same way, forever? ” 

“ How can you talk about * forever ’ to 
a maimed creature like me? Are we not 
all cut down like the grass of the field, 
and was not I shorn by the scythe many 
years ago : since when, I have been ly- 
ing here, waiting to be gathered into 
the barn ? ” 

“ Ay, ay ! But since you have been 
lying here — not near dead — nothing 
like it — numbers of children and young 
people, blooming women, strong men, 
and what not, have been cut down and 
carried ; and still here are you, you see, 
not much changed after all. Your time 
and mine may be along one yet. When 
I say forever, I mean (though I am not 
poetical) through all our time.” Mr. 
Flintwinch gave this explanation with 
great calmness, and calmly waited for 
an answer. 

“ So long as Little Dorrit is quiet, 
and industrious, and stands in need of 


the slight help I can give her, and 
deserves it, — so long, I suppose, unless 
she withdraws of her own act, she will 
continue to come here, I being spared.” 

“ Nothing more than that ? ” said 
Flintwinch, stroking his mouth and 
chin. 

“ What should there be more than 
that ! What could there be more than 
that !” she ejaculated, in her sternly 
wondering way. 

Mrs. Flintwinch dreamed, that, for 
the space of a minute or two, they re- 
mained looking at each other with the 
candle between them, and that she 
somehow derived an impression that 
they looked at each other fixedly. 

“ Do you happen to know, Mrs. 
Clennam,” Affery’s liege lord then de- 
manded in a much lower voice, and 
with an amount of expression that 
seemed quite out of proportion to the 
simple purpose of his words, “ where 
she lives? ” 

“ No.” 

“Would you, — now’, would you like 
to know?” said Jeremiah, with a 
pounce as if he had sprung upon her. 

“ If I cared to know, I should know 
already. Could I not have asked her, 
any day? ” 

“ Then ydu don’t care to know? ” 

“I do not.” 

Mr. Flintwinch, having expelled a 
long, significant breath, said with his 
former emphasis, “For I have ac- 
cidentally — mind ! — found out.” 

“ Wherever she lives,” said Mrs. 
Clennam, speaking in one unmodulated 
hard voice, and separating her words as 
distinctly as if she were reading them off 
from separate bits of metal that she took 
up one by one, “ she has made a secret 
of it, and she shall always keep her secret 
from me.” 

“ After all, perhaps you would rather 
not have known the fact, anyhow ? ” 
said Jeremiah ; and he said it with a 
twist, as if his words had come out of 
him in his own wry shape. 

“ Flintwinch,” said his mistress and 
partner, flashing into a sudden energy 
that made Affery start, “ why do you 
goad me ? Look round this room. If 
it is any compensation for my long con- 
finement within these nanow limits, — 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


107 


not that I complain of being afflicted ; 
you know I never complain of that, — 
if it is any compensation to me for my 
long confinement to this room, that while 
I am shut up from all pleasant change 
I am also shut up from the knowledge 
of some things that I may prefer to 
avoid knowing, why should you, of all 
men, grudge me that relief? 

“ I don’t grudge it to you,” returned 
Jeremiah. 

“ Then say no more. Say no more. 
Let Little Dorrit keep her secret from 
me, and do you keep it from me also. 
Let her come and go, unobserved and 
unquestioned. Let me suffer, and let 
me have what alleviation belongs to my 
Condition. Is it so much, that you tor- 
ment me like an evil spirit ? ” 

“ I asked you a question. That ’s 
all.” 

“ I have answered it. So say no 
more. Say no more.” Here the sound 
of the wheeled chair was heard upon 
the floor, and Affery’s bell rang with a 
hasty jerk. 

More afraid of her husband at the 
moment than of the mysterious sound 
in the kitchen, Affery crept away as 
lightly and as quickly as she could, de- 
scended the kitchen stairs almost as 
rapidly as she had ascended them, re- 
sumed her seat before the fire, tucked 
up her skirt again, and finally threw her 
apron over her head. Then the bell 
rang once more, and then once more, 
and then kept on ringing ; in despite of 
which importunate summons, Affery still 
sat behind her apron recovering her 
breath. 

At last Mr. Flintwinch came shuffling 
down the staircase into the hall, mut- 
tering and calling, “ Affery, woman ! ” 
all the way. Affery still remaining 
behind her apron, he came stumbling 
down the kitchen stairs, candle in hand, 
sidled up to her, twitched her apron off, 
and roused her. 

“ O Jeremiah ! ” cried Affery, wak- 
ing. “ What a start you gave me ! ” 

“ What have you been doing, wo- 
man ? ” inquired Jeremiah. “You’ve 
been rung for fifty- times.” 

“ O Jeremiah,” said Mistress Affery, 
“ I have been a dreaming ! ” 

Reminded of her former achievement 


in that way, Mr. Flintwinch held the 
candle to her head, as if he had some 
idea of lighting her up for the illumi- 
nation of the kitchen. 

“ Don’t you know it ’s her tea-time ? ” 
he demanded, with a vicious grin, and 
giving one of the legs of Mistress Af- 
fery’s chair a kick. 

“Jeremiah? Tea-time? I don’t 
know what ’s come tq me. But I got 
such a dreadful turn, Jeremiah, before 
I went — off a dreaming, that I think it 
must be that.” 

“Yoogh! Sleepy-head!” said Mr. 
Flintwinch, “ what are you talking 
about ? ” 

“ Such a strange noise, Jeremiah, 
and such a curious movement. In the 
kitchen here, — just here.” 

Jeremiah held up his light, and looked 
at the blackened ceiling, held down his 
light, and looked at the damp stone 
floor, turned round with his light, and 
looked about at the spotted and blotched 
walls. 

“Rats, cats, water, drains,” said Jere- 
miah. 

Mistress Affery negatived each with 
a shake of her head. “No, Jeremiah ; 
I have felt it before. I have felt it up 
stairs, and once on the staircase as I 
was going from her room to ours in the 
night, — a rustle and a sort of trembling 
touch behind me.” 

“Affery, my woman,” said Mr. Flint- 
winch, grimly, after advancing his nose 
to that lady’s lips as a test for the de- 
tection of spirituous liquors, “ if you 
don’t get tea pretty quick, old woman, 
you ’ll become sensible of a rustle and 
a touch that ’ll send you flying to the 
other end of the kitchen.” 

This prediction stimulated Mrs. Flint- 
winch to bestir herself, and to hasten up 
stairs to Mrs. Clennam’s chamber. But, 
for all that, she now began to enter- 
tain a settled conviction that there was 
something wrong in the gloomy house. 
Henceforth she was never at peace in 
it after daylight departed ; and never 
went up or down stairs in the dark with- 
out having her apron over her head, 
lest she should see something. 

What with these ghostly apprehen- 
sions, and her singular dreams, Mrs. 
Flintwinch fell that evening into a 


io3 


LITTLE D0RR1T. 


haunted state of mind, from which it 
may be long before this present narra- 
tive descries any trace of her recovery. 
In the vagueness and indistinctness of 
all her new experiences and perceptions, 
as everything about her was mysterious 
to herself, she began to be mysterious 
to others ; and became as difficult to be 
made out to anybody’s satisfaction as 
she found the house and everything in 
it difficult to make out to her own. 

She had not yet finished preparing 
Mrs. Clennam’s tea, when the soft 
knock came to the door which always 
announced Little Dorrit. Mistress Af- 
fery looked on at Little Dorrit taking 
off her homely bonnet in the hall, and 
at Mr. Flintwinch, scraping his jaws 
and contemplating her in silence, as 
expecting some wonderful consequence 
to ensue which would frighten her out 
of her five wits or blow them all three 
to pieces. 

After tea there came another knock 
at the door, announcing Arthur. Mis- 
tress Affery went down to let him in, 
and he said on entering, “ Affery, I am 
glad it ’s you, I want to ask you a 
question.” Affery immediately replied, 
“ For goodness’ sake don’t ask me noth- 
ing, Arthur ! I am frightened out of 
one half of my life, and dreamed out of 
the other. Don’t ask me nothing ! I 
don’t know which is which, or what 
is what 1 ” — and immediately started 
away from him, and came near him no 
more. 

Mistress Affery having no taste for 
reading, and no sufficient light for nee- 
dle-work in the subdued room, suppos- 
ing her to have the inclination, now sat 
every night in the dimness from which 
she had momentarily emerged on the 
evening of. Arthur Clennam’s return, 
occupied with crowds of wild specula- 
tions and suspicions respecting her mis- 
tress, and her husband, and the noises 
in the house. When the ferocious de- 
votional exercises were engaged in, 
these speculations would distract Mis- 
tress Affery’s eyes towards the door, as 
if she expected some dark form to ap- 
pear at those propitious moments, and 
make the party one too many. 

^Otherwise, Affery never said or did 
anything to attract the attention of the 


two clever ones towards her in any 
marked degree, except on certain occa- 
sions, generally at about the quiet hours 
towards bedtime, when she would sud- 
denly dart out of her dim corner, and 
whisper, with a face of terror, to Mr. 
Flintwinch reading the paper near Mrs. 
Clennam’s little table, — 

“ There, Jeremiah ! Now! What’s 
that noise ! ” 

Then the noise, if there were any, 
would have ceased, and Mr. Flintwinch 
would snarl, turning upon her as if she 
had cut him down that moment against 
his will ; “ Affery, old woman, you shall 
have a dose, old woman, such a dose ! 
You have been dreaming again ! ” 


CHAPTER XVI. 
nobody’s weakness. 

The time being come for the renewal 
of his acquaintance w’ith the M eagles 
family, Clennam, pursuant to contract 
made between himself and Mr. Mea- 
gles, within the precincts of Bleeding 
Heart Yard, turned his face on a cer- 
tain Saturday towards Twickenham, 
where Mr. Meagles had a cottage resi- 
dence of his own. The weather being 
fine and dry, and any English road 
abounding in interest for him who had 
been so long away, he sent his valise on 
by the coach, and set out to walk. A 
walk was in itself a new enjoyment to 
him, and one that had rarely diversified 
his life afar off. 

He w’ent by Fulham and Putney, for 
the pleasure of strolling over the heath. 
It was bright and shining there ; and 
when he found himself so far on his 
road to Twickenham, he found himself 
a long way on his road to a number of 
airier and less substantial destinations. 
They had risen before him fast, in the 
healthful exercise and the pleasant road. 
It is not easy to w'alk alone in the coun- 
try without musing upon something. 
And he had plenty of unsettled subjects 
to meditate upon, though he had been 
walking to the Land’s End. 

First, there was the subject seldom 
absent from his mind, the question, 



MR. AND MRS. FLINTWINCH 







































































































































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LITTLE DORRIT. 


zog 


what he was to do henceforth in life ; 
to what occupation he should devote 
himself, and in what direction he had 
best seek it. He was far from rich, and 
every day of indecision and inaction 
made his inheritance a source of greater 
anxiety to him. As often as he began 
to consider how to increase this inher- 
itance, or to lay it by, so often his mis- 
giving that there was some one with an 
unsatisfied claim upon his justice, re- 
turned ; and that alone was a subject to 
outlast the longest walk. Again, there 
was the subject of his relations with his 
mother, which were now upon an equa- 
ble and peaceful, but never confidential 
footing, and whom he saw r several times 
a week. Little Dorrit was a leading 
and a constant subject ; for the circum- 
stances of his life, united to those of 
her own story, presented the little crea- 
ture to him as the only person between 
whom and himself there were ties of in- 
nocent reliance on one hand, and affec- 
tionate protection on the other ; ties of 
compassion, respect, unselfish interest, 
gratitude, and pity. Thinking of her, 
and of the possibility of her father’s re- 
lease from prison by the unbarring hand 
of death, — the only change of circum- 
stance he could foresee that might ena- 
ble him to be such a friend to her as he 
wished to be, by altering her whole 
manner of life, smoothing her rough 
road, and giving her a home, — he re- 
garded her, in that perspective, as his 
adopted daughter, his poor child of the 
Marshalsea hushed to rest. If there 
were a last subject in his thoughts, and 
it lay towards Twickenham, its form 
was so indefinite that it was little more 
than the pervading atmosphere in 
which these other subjects floated be- 
fore him. 

He had crossed the heath, and was 
leaving it behind, when he gained upon 
a figure which had been in advance of 
him for some time, and which, as he 
gained upon it, he thought he knew. 
He derived this impression from some- 
thing in the turn of the head and in the 
figure’s action of consideration, as it 
went on at a sufficiently sturdy walk. 
But when the man — for it was a man’s 
figure — pushed his hat up at the back 
of his head, and stopped to consider 


some object before him, he knew it to 
be Daniel Doyce. 

“ How do you do, Mr. Doyce?” said 
Clennam, overtaking him. “ I am glad 
to see you again, and in a healthier 
place than the Circumlocution Office.” 

“ Ha ! Mr. Meagles’s friend ! ” ex- 
claimed that public criminal, coming 
out of some mental combinations he 
had been making, and offering his 
hand. “I am glad to see you, sir. 
Will you excuse me if I forget your 
name ? ” 

“ Readily. It ’s not a celebrated 
name. It ’s not Barnacle.” 

“ No, no,” said Daniel, laughing. 
“And now I know what it is. It’s 
Clennam. How do you do, Mr. Clen- 
nam ? ” 

“ I have some hope,” said Arthur, 
as they walked on together, “ that we 
may be going to the same place, Mr. 
Doyce.” 

“ Meaning Twickenham ? ” returned 
Daniel. “ I am glad to hear it.” 

They were soon quite intimate, and 
lightened the way with a variety of 
cpnversation. The ingenious culprit 
was a man of great modesty and good 
sense, and, though a plain man, had 
been too much accustomed to combine 
what was original and daring in con- 
ception with what was patient and mi- 
nute in execution, to be by any means 
an ordinary man. It was at first diffi- 
cult to lead him to speak about himself, 
and he put off Arthur’s advances in that 
direction by admitting slightly, O yes, 
he had done this, and he had done that, 
and such a thing was of his making, 
and such another thing was his discov- 
ery, but it was his trade, you see, — his 
trade ; until, as he gradually became 
assured that his companion had a real 
interest in his account of himself, he 
frankly yielded to it. Then it appeared 
that he was the son of a north-country 
blacksmith, and had originally been 
apprenticed by his widowed mother to 
a lock-maker ; that he had “ struck out 
a few little things ” at the lock-maker’s, 
which had led to his being released 
from his indentures with a present, 
which present had enabled him to grati- 
fy his ardent wish to bind himself to a 
working engineer, under whom he had 


no 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


labored hard, learned hard, and lived 
hard seven years. His time being out, 
he had “ worked in the shop,” at week- 
ly wages, seven or eight years more ; 
and had then betaken himself to the 
banks of the Clyde, where he had 
studied and filed and hammered, and 
improved his knowledge, theoretical 
and practical, for six or seven years 
more. There he had had an offer to go 
to Lyons, which he had accepted ; and 
from Lyons had been engaged to go to 
Germany, and in Germany had had an 
offer to go to St. Petersburg, and there 
had done very w r ell indeed, — never 
better. However, he had naturally felt 
a preference for his own country and a 
wish to gain distinction there, and to do 
whatever service he could do there, rath- 
er than elsewhere. And so he had come 
home. And so at home he had estab- 
lished himself in business, and had in- 
vented and executed and worked his way 
on, until, after a dozen years of constant 
suit and service, he had been enrolled 
in the Great British Legion of Honor, 
the Legion of the Rebuffed of the Cir- 
cumlocution Office, and had been dec- 
orated with the Great British Order of 
Merit, the Order of the Disorder of the 
Barnacles and Stiltstalkings. 

“ It is much to be regretted,” said 
Clennam, “ that you ever turned your 
thoughts that way, Mr. Doyce.” 

“ True, sir, true to a certain extent. 
But what is a man to do? If he has 
the misfortune to strike out something 
serviceable to the nation, he must fol- 
low where dt leads him.” 

“ Had n’t he better let it go ? ” asked 
Clennam. 

“ He can’t do it,” said Doyce, shak- 
ing his head with a thoughtful smile. 
“ It ’s not put into his head to be buried. 
It’s put into his head to be made use- 
ful. You hold your life on the condi- 
tion that to the last you shall struggle 
hard for it. Every man holds a discov- 
ery on the same terms.” 

“ That is to say,” said Arthur, with a 
growing admiration of his quiet com- 
panion, “you are not finally discour- 
aged even now?” 

“ I have no right to be, if I am,’’ re* 
turned the other. “The thing is as 
true as it ever was.” 


When they had walked a little way 
in silence, Clinnam, at once to change 
the direct point of their conversation 
and not to change it too abruptly, 
asked Mr. Doyce if he had any partner 
in his business to relieve him of a por- 
tion of its anxieties? 

“ No,” he returned, “not at present. 
I had when' I first entered on it, and a 
good man he was. But he has been 
dead some years ; and as I could not 
easily take to the notion of another when 
I lost him, I bought his share for my- 
self and have gone on by myself ever 
since. And here’s another thing,” he 
said, stopping for a moment with a good- 
humored laugh in his eyes, and laying 
his closed right hand, with its peculiar 
suppleness of thumb, on Clennam’s 
arm, — “no inventor can be a man of 
business you know.” 

“No?” said Clennam. 

“Why, so the men of business say,” 
he answered, resuming the walk and 
laughing outright. “ I don’t know why 
we unfortunate creatures should be sup- 
posed to want common sense, but it is 
generally taken for granted that we do. 
Even the best friend I have in the 
world, our excellent friend over yonder,” 
said Doyce, nodding towards Twicken- 
ham, “ extends a sort of protection to 
me, don’t you know, as a man not quite 
able to take care of himself? ” 

Arthur Clennam could not help join- 
ing in the good-humored laugh, for he 
recognized the truth of the description. 

“ So I find that I must have a part- 
ner who is a man of business and not 
guilty of any inventions,” said Daniel 
Doyce, taking off his hat to pass his 
hand over his forehead, “ if it ’s only in 
deference to the current opinion, and to 
uphold the credit of the Works. I don’t 
think he ’ll find that I have been very 
remiss or confused in my way of con- 
ducting them ; but that ’s for him to say, 
— whoever he is, — not for me.” 

“You have not chosen him yet, 
then ? ” 

“ No, sir, no. I have only just come 
to a decision to take one. The fact is, 
there ’s more to do than there used to be, 
and the Works are enough for me as I 
grow older. What with the books and 
correspondence, and foreign journeys for 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


hi 


which a Principal is necessary, I can’t 
do all. I am going to talk over the best 
way of negotiating the matter, if I find 
a spare half-hour between this and 
Monday morning, with my — my Nurse 
and protector,” said Doyce, with laugh- 
ing eyes, again. “ He is a sagacious 
man in business, and has had a good 
apprenticeship to it.” 

After this they conversed on differ- 
ent subjects until they arrived at their 
journey’s end. A composed and unob- 
trusive self-sustainment was noticeable 
in Daniel Doyce, — a calm knowledge 
that what was true must remain true, 
in spite of all the Barnacles in the family 
ocean, and would be just the truth, and 
neither more nor less, when even that 
sea had run dry, — which had a kind of 
greatness in it, though not of the official 
quality. 

As he knew the house well, he con- 
ducted Arthur to it by the way that 
showed it to the best advantage. It 
was a charming place (none the worse 
for being a little eccentric), on the road 
by the river, and just what the resi- 
dence of the M eagles family ought to 
be. It stood in a garden, no doubt as 
fresh and beautiful in the May of the 
year as Pet now was in the May of 
her life ; and it was defended by a 
goodly show of handsome trees and 
spreading evergreens, as Pet was. by 
Mr. and Mrs. Meagles. It was made 
out of an old brick house, of which a 
part had been altogether pulled down, 
and another part had been changed in- 
to the present cottage ; so there was a 
hale elderly portion to represent Mr. 
and Mrs. Meagles, and a young pic- 
turesque, very pretty portion to repre- 
sent Pet. There was even the later 
addition of a conservatory sheltering 
itself against it, uncertain of hue in its 
deep stained glass, and in its more 
transparent portions flashing to the 
sun’s rays, now like fire and now like 
harmless water-drops ; which might 
have stood for Tattycoram. Within 
view was the peaceful river and the 
ferry-boat, to moralize to all the in- 
mates, saying : Young or old, passion- 
ate or tranquil, chafing or content, you, 
thus runs the current always. Let the 
heart swell into what discord it will, 


thus plays the rippling water on the prow 
of the ferry-boat ever the same tune. 
Year after year, so much allowance for 
the drifting of the boat, so many miles 
an hour the flowing of the stream, here 
the rushes, there the lilies, nothing un- 
certain or unquiet, upon this road that 
steadily runs away ; while you, upon 
your flowing road of time, are so capri- 
cious and distracted. 

The bell at the gate had scarcely 
sounded when Mr. Meagles came out 
to receive them. Mr. Meagles had 
scarcely come out, when Mrs. Meagles 
came out. Mrs. Meagles had scarcely 
come out^ when Pet came out. Pet 
had scarcely come out, when Tattyco- 
ram came out. Never had visitors a 
more hospitable reception. 

“ Here we are, you see,” said Mr. 
Meagles, “boxed up, Mr. Clennam, 
within our own home-limits, as if we 
were never going to expand — that is, 
travel — again. Not like Marseilles, 
eh? No allonging and marshonging 
here ? ” 

“ A different kind of beauty, in- 
deed ! ” said Clennam, looking about 
him. 

“But, Lord bless me!” cried Mr. 
Meagles, rubbing his hands with a rel- 
ish, “it w r as an uncommonly pleasant 
thing being in quarantine, wasn’t it? 
Do you know I have often wished my- 
self back again? We were a capital 
party.” 

This was Mr. Meagles’s invariable 
habit. Always to object to everything 
while he was travelling, and always to 
want to get back to it when he was not 
travelling. 

“If it was summer-time,” said Mr. 
Meagles, “ which I wish it was on 5'our 
account, and in order that you might 
see the place at its best, you w-ould 
hardly be able to hear yourself speak for 
birds. Being practical people, we nev- 
er allow anybody to scare the birds ; 
and the birds, being practical people 
too, come about us in myriads. We 
are delighted to see you, Clennam (if 
you ’ll allow me, I shall drop the Mis- 
ter) ; I heartily assure you we are de- 
lighted.” 

“I have not had so pleasant a greet- 
ing,” said Clennam, — then he recalled 


112 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


what Little Dorrit had said to him in 
his own room, and faithfully added, 

“ except once, — since we last walked to 
and fro, looking down at the Mediter- 
ranean.” 

“Ah!” returned Mr. Meagles. 

“ Something like a lookout, that was, 
was n’t it? I don’t want a military gov- 
ernment, but I should n’t mind a lit- 
tle allonging and marshonging — just a 
dash of it — in this neighborhood some- 
times. It ’s devilish still.” 

Bestowing this eulogium on the re- 
tired character of his retreat with a du- 
bious shake of the head, Mr. Meagles 
led the way into the house. It was 
just large enough, and no more ; was 
as pretty within as it was without, and 
was perfectly well arranged and com- 
fortable. Some traces of the migrato- 
ry habits of the family were to be ob- 
served in the covered frames and fur- 
niture, and wrapped-up hangings ; but 
it was easy to see that it was one of 
Mr. Meagles’s whims to have the cot- 
tage always kept, in their absence, as - 
if they were always coming back the 
day after to-morrow. Of articles col- 
lected on his various expeditions^ there 
was such a vast miscellany that it was 
like the dwelling of an amiable Corsair. 
There were antiquities from Central 
Italy, made by the best modern houses 
in that department of industry ; bits 
of mummy from Egypt (and perhaps 
Birmingham) ; model gondolas from 
Venice ; model villages from Switzer- 
land ; morsels of tessellated pavement 
from Herculaneum and Pompeii, like 
petrified minced veal ; ashes out of 
tombs, and lava out of Vesuvius ; Span- 
ish fans, Spezzian straw hats, Moorish 
slippers, Tuscan hair-pins, Carrara 
sculpture, Trastaverini scarfs, Geno- 
ese velvets and filigree, Neapolitan 
coral, Roman cameos, Geneva jewelry, 
Arab lanterns, rosaries blest all round 
by the Pope himself, and an infinite 
variety of lumber. There were views, 
like and unlike, of a multitude of 
places ; and there was one little picture- 
room devoted to a few of the regular 
sticky old Saints, with sinews like whip- 
cord, hair like Neptune’s, wrinkles like 
tattooing, and such coats of varnish 
that every holy personage served for a 


fly-trap, and became what is now called 
in the vulgar tongue a Catch-em-alive 
O. Of these pictorial acquisitions Mr. 
Meagles spoke in the usual manner. 
He was no judge, he said, except of 
what pleased himself ; he had picked 
them up, dirt-cheap, and people had 
considered them rather fine. One 
man, who at any rate ought to know 
something of the subject, had declared 
that “Sage, Reading,” (a specially oily 
old gentleman in a blanket, with a 
swan’s-down tippet for a beard, and a 
web of cracks all over him like rich pie- 
crust,) to be a fine Guercino. As for 
Sebastian del Piombo there, you would 
judge for- yourself ; if it were not his 
later manner, the question was, Who 
was it? Titian, that might or might 
not be, — perhaps he had only touched 
it. Daniel Doyce said, perhaps he 
hadn’t touched it, but Mr. Meagles 
rather declined to overhear the re- 
mark. 

When he had shown all his spoils, 
Mr. Meagles took them into his own 
snug room overlooking the lawn, which 
was fitted up in part like a dressing- 
room and in part like an office, and in 
which, upon a kind of counter-desk, 
were a pair of brass scales for weighing 
gold, and a scoop for shovelling out 
money. 

“ Here they are, you see,” said Mr. 
Meagles. “I stood- behind these two 
articles five-and-thirty years running, 
when I no more, thought of gadding 
about than I now think of — staying at 
home. When I left the Bank for good, 

I asked for them, and brought them 
away with me. I mention it at once, or 
you might suppose that I sit in my 
counting-house (as Pet says I do), like 
the king in the poem of the four-and- 
twenty blackbirds, counting out my 
money.” 

Clennam’s eyes had strayed to a nat- 
ural picture on the wall of two pretty 
little girls with their arms entwined. 
“Yes, Clennam,” said Mr. Meagles in 
a lower voice. “ There they both are. 
It was taken Some seventeen years ago. 
As I often say to mother, they were ba- 
bies then.” 

“ Their names? ” said Arthur. 

“Ah, to be sure! You have never 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


”3 


, heard any name bat Pet. Pet’s name 
is Minnie ; her sister’s, Lillie.” 

“ Should you have known, Mr. Clen- 
nam, that one of them was meant for 
me?” asked Pet herself, now standing 
in the doorway. 

“ I might have thought that both of 
them were meant for you, both are still 
so like you. Indeed,” said Clennam, 
glancing from the fair original to the 
picture and back, “ I cannot even now 
say which is not your portrait.” 

“D’ye hear that, mother,” cried 
Mr. Meagles to his wife, who had fol- 
lowed her daughter.' “ It ’s always the 
same, Clennam ; nobody can decide. 
The child to your left is Pet.” 

The picture happened to be near a 
looking-glass. As Arthur looked at it 
again, he saw, by the reflection of the 
mirror, Tattycoram stop in passing out- 
side the door, listen to what was going 
on, and pass away with an angry and 
contemptuous frown upon her face that 
changed its beauty into ugliness. 

“ But come ! ” said Mr. Meagles. 
“ You have had a long walk, and will 
be glad to get your boots off. As to 
Daniel, here, I suppose he ’d never 
think of taking his boots off, unless we 
showed him a bootjack.” 

“Why not?” asked Daniel, with a 
significant smile at Clennam. 

“ Oh ! You have so many things to 
think about,” returned . Mr. Meagles, 
clapping him on the shoulder, as if his 
weakness must not be left to itself on 
any account. “ Figures, and wheefs, 
and cogs, and levers, and screws, and 
cylinders, and a thousand things.” 

“ In my calling,” said Daniel, amused, 
“ the greater usually includes the less. 
But never mind, never mind ! What- 
ever pleases you, pleases me.” 

Clennam could not help speculating, 
as he seated himself in his room by the 
fire, whether there might be in the 
breast of this honest, affectionate, and 
cordial Mr. Meagles any microscopic 
portion of the mustard-seed that had 
sprung up into the great tree of the Cir- 
cumlocution Office. His curious sense 
of a general superiority to Daniel 
Doyce, which seemed to be founded, 
not so much on anything in Doyce’s 
personal character, as on the rfiere fact 

8 


of his being an originator and a man 
out of the beaten track of other men, 
suggested the idea. It might have oc- 
cupied him until he went down to din- 
ner an hour afterwards, if he had not 
had another question to consider, which 
had been in his mind so long ago as be- 
fore he was in quarantine at Marseilles, 
and which had now returned to it, and 
was very urgent with it. No less a 
question than this : Whether he should 
allow himself to fall in love with Pet ? 

He was twice her age. (He changed 
the leg he had crossed over the other, 
and tried the calculation again, but 
could not bring out the total at less.) 
He was twice her age. Well ! He 
was young in appearance, young in 
health and strength, young in heart. A 
man was certainly tiot old at forty ; and 
many men were not in circumstances 
to marry, or did not marry, until they 
attained that time of life. On the oth- 
er hand, the question was, not what he 
thought of the point, but what she 
thought of it. 

He believed that Mr. Meagles ’’was 
disposed to entertain a ripe regard for 
him, and he knew that he had a sin- 
cere regard for Mr. Meagles and his 
good wife. He could foresee that to 
relinquish this beautiful only child, of 
whom they were so fond, to any hus- 
band, would be a trial of their love 
which perhaps they never yet had had 
the fortitude to contemplate. But the 
more beautiful and winning and charm- 
ing she, the nearer they must always be 
to the necessity of approaching it. And 
why not in his favor, as well as in an- 
other’s? 

When he had got so far, it came 
again into his head, that the question 
was, not what they thought of it, but 
what she thought of it. 

Arthur Clennam was a retiring man, 
with a sense of many deficiencies ; and 
he so exalted the merits of the beautiful 
Minnie in his mind, and depressed his 
own, that when he pinned himself to this 
point, his hopes began to fail him. 
He carpe to the final resolution, as he 
made himself ready for dinner, that he 
would not allow himself to fall in love 
with Pet. 

They were only five, at a round table, 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


114 

and it was very pleasant indeed. They 
had so many places and people to re- 
call, and they were all so easy and 
cheerful together (Daniel Doyce either 
sitting out like an amused spectator at 
cards, or coming in with some shrewd 
little experiences of his own, when it 
happened to be to the purpose), that 
they might have been together twenty 
times, and not have known so much of 
one another. 

“And Miss Wade,” said Mr. Mea- 
gles, after they had recalled a number 
of fellow-travellers. “ Has anybody 
seen Miss Wade?” 

“ I have,” said Tattycoram. 

She had brought a little mantle which 
her young mistress had sent for, and 
was bending over her, putting it on, 
when she lifted up her dark eyes, and 
made this unexpected answer. 

“ Tatty ! ” her young mistress ex- 
claimed. “You seen Miss Wade? — 
where? ” 

“ Here, miss,” said Tattycoram. 

“How?” 

An impatient glance from Tattycoram 
seemed, as Clennam saw it, to answer, 
“With my eyes!” But her only an- 
swer in words was, “ I met her near 
the church.” 

“ What was she doing there I won- 
der ! ” said Mr. Meagles. “ Not go- 
ing to it, I should think.” 

“ She had written to me first,” said 
Tattycoram. 

“ O Tatty ! ” murmured her mistress, 
“ take your hands away. I feel as if 
some one else was touching me ! ” 

She said it in a quick, involuntary way, 
but half playfully, and not more petu- 
lantly or disagreeably than a favorite 
child might have done, who laughed 
next moment. Tattycoram set her full 
red lips together, and crossed her 
arms upon her bosom. 

“Did you wish to know, sir,” she 
said, looking at Mr. Meagles, “ what 
Miss Wade wrote to me about?” 

“Well, Tattycoram,” returned Mr. 
Meagles, “ since you ask the question, 
and we are all friends here, perhaps you 
may as well mention it, if you are so in- 
clined.” 

“ She knew, when we were travelling, 
where you lived,” said Tattycoram, “ and 


she had seen me not quite — not 
quite — ” 

“ Not quite in a good temper, Tatty- 
coram ? ” suggested Mr. Meagles, shak- 
ing his head at the dark eyes with a 
quiet caution. “ Take a little time, — 
count five-and-twenty, Tattycoram.” 

She pressed her lips together again, 
and took a long deep breath. 

“ So she wrote to me to say that if I 
ever felt myself hurt,” she looked down 
at her young mistress, “ or found myself 
worried,” she looked down at her again, 
“ I might go to her, and be considerate- 
ly treated. I was to think of it, and 
could speak to her by the church. So I 
went there to thank her.” 

“Tatty,” said her young mistress, 
putting her hand up over her shoul- 
der that the other might take it, 
“ Miss Wade almost frightened me 
when we parted, and I scarcely liked 
to think of her just now as having 
been so near me without my knowing 
it. Tatty, dear ! ” 

Tatty stood for a moment immovable. 

“ Hey ? ” cried Mr. Meagles. “ Count 
another five-and-twenty, Tattycoram.” 

She might have counted a dozen, 
when she bent and put her lips to the 
caressing hand. It patted her cheek, 
as it touched the owner’s beautiful 
curls, and Tattycoram went away. 

“ Now, there,” said Mr. Meagles, 
softly, as he gave a turn to the dumb- 
waiter on his right hand to twirl the 
sugar towards himself. “ There ’s a 
girl who might be lost and ruined,, if 
she was n’t amcFng practical people. 
Mother and I know, solely from being 
practical, that there are times when that 
girl’s whole nature seems to roughen 
itself against seeing us so bound up in 
Pet. No father and mother were bound 
up in her, poor soul. I don’t like to 
think of the way in which that unfor- 
tunate child, with all that passion and 
protest in her, feels when she hears the 
Fifth Commandment on a Sunday. I 
am always inclined to call out, Church, 
Count five-and-twenty, Tattycoram.” 

Besides his dumb-waiter, Mr. Mea- 
gles had two other not dumb-waiters, in 
the persons of two parlor-maids, with 
rosy faces and bright eyes, who were 
a highly ornamental part of the table 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


decoration. “ And why not, you see ? ” 
said Mr. Meagles, on this head. “ As 
I always say to mother, why not have 
something pretty to look at, if you have 
anything at all ? ” 

A certain Mrs. Tickit, who was Cook 
and Housekeeper when the family were 
at home, and Housekeeper only when 
the family were away, completed the 
establishment. Mr. Meagles regretted 
that the nature of the duties in which 
she was engaged rendered Mrs. Tickit 
unpresentable at present, but hoped to 
introduce her to the new visitor to-mor- 
row. She was an important part of the 
cottage, he said, and all his friends 
knew her. That was her picture up in 
the corner. When they went away, 
she always put on the silk gown and 
the jet-black row of curls represented 
in that portrait (her hair was reddish 
gray in the kitchen), established herself 
in the breakfast-room, put her specta- 
cles between two particular leaves of 
Doctor Buchan’s Domestic Medicine, 
and sat looking over the blind all day 
until they came back again. It was 
supposed that no persuasion could be 
invented which would induce Mrs. 
Tickit to abandon her post at the blind, 
however long their absence, or to dis- 
pense with the attendance of Dr. Bu- 
chan : the lucubrations of which learned 
practitioner, Mr. Meagles implicitly be- 
lieved she had never yet consulted to 
the extent of one word in her life. 

In the evening they played an old- 
fashioned rubber ; and Pet sat looking 
over his father’s hand, or singing to 
herself by fits and starts at the piano. 
She was a spoilt child ; but how could 
she be otherwise ? Who could be much 
with so pliable and beautiful a creature, 
and not yield to her endearing influ- 
ence? Who could pass an evening in 
the house, and not love her for the 
grace and charm of her very presence in 
the room? This was Clennam’s reflec- 
tion, notwithstanding the final conclu- 
sion at which he had arrived up stairs. 

In making it, he revoked. “ Why, 
what are you thinking of, my good sir ?” 
asked the astonished Mr. Meagles, who 
was his partner. “ I beg your pardon. 
Nothing,’’ returned Clennam. “Think 
of something next time ; that ’s a dear 


1J S 

fellow,” said Mr. Meagles. Pet laugh- 
ingly believed he had been thinking of 
Miss Wade. “Why of Miss Wade, 
Pet?” asked her father. “Why. in- 
deed ! ” said Arthur Clennam. Pet 
colored a little, and went to the piano 
again. 

As they broke up for the night, Ar- 
thur overheard Doyce ask his host if 
he could give him half an hour’s con- 
versation before breakfast in the morn- 
ing. The host replying willingly, Ar- 
thur lingered behind a moment, having 
his own word to add on that topic. 

“ Mr. Meagles,” he said, on their 
being left alone, “ do you remember 
when you advised me to go straight to 
London ? ” 

“ Perfectly well.” 

“ And when you gave me some other 
good advice, which I needed at that 
time ? ” 

“ I won’t say what it was worth,” an- 
swered Mr. Meagles; “but of course 
I remember our being very pleasant and 
confidential together.” 

“ I have acted on your advice ; and, 
having disembarrassed myself of an oc- 
cupation that was painful to me for 
many reasons, wish to devote myself and 
what means I have to another pur- 
suit.” 

“ Right ! You can’t do it too soon,” 
said Mr. Meagles. 

“Now, as I came down to-day, I 
found that your friend, Mr. Doyce, is 
looking for a partner in his business, — 
not a partner in his mechanical knowl- 
edge, but in the ways and means of 
turning the business arising from it to 
the best account.” 

“Just so,” said Mr. Meagles, with 
his hands in his pockets, and with the 
old business expression of face that had 
belonged to the scales and scoop. 

“ Mr. Doyce mentioned incidentally, 
in the course of our conversation, that 
he was going to take your valuable ad- 
vice on the subject of finding such a 
partner. If you should think our views 
and opportunities at all likely to coin- 
cide, perhaps you will let him know my 
available position. I speak, of course, 
in ignorance of the details, and they 
may be unsuitable on both sides.” 

“ No doubt, no doubt,” said Mr. 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


116 

Meagles, with the caution belonging to 
the scales and scoop. 

“ But they will be a question of fig- 
ures and accounts — ” 

“Just so, just so,” said Mr. Meagles, 
with the arithmetical solidity belonging 
to the scales and scoop. 

“ — And I shall be glad to enter into 
the subject, provided Mr. Doyce re- 
sponds, and you think well of it. If 
you will at present, therefore, allow me 
to place it in your hands, you will much 
oblige me.” 

“ Clennam, I accept the trust with 
readiness,” said Mr. Meagles. “And 
without anticipating any of the points 
which you, as a man of business, have 
of course reserved, I am free to say to 
you that I think something may come 
of this. Of one thing you may be per- 
fectly certain, — Daniel is an honest 
man.” 

“ I am so sure of it that I have 
promptly made up my mind to speak to 
you.” 

“You must guide him, you know; 
you must steer him ; you must direct 
him ; he is one of a crotchety sort,” 
said Mr. Meagles, evidently meaning 
nothing more than that he did new 
things and went new ways ; “ but he is 
as honest as the sun, and so good 
night ! ” 

Clennam went back to his room, sat 
down again before his fire, and made 
up his mind that he was glad he had 
resolved not to fall in love with Pet. 
She was so beautiful, so amiable, so 
apt to receive any true impression given 
to her gentle nature and her innocent 
heart, and make the man who should 
be so happy as to communicate it the 
most fortunate and enviable of all men, 
that he was very glad indeed he had 
come to that conclusion. 

But as this might have been a rea- 
son for coming to the opposite conclu- 
sion, he followed out the theme again a 
little way in his mind. To justify him- 
self, perhaps. 

“ Suppose that a man,” so his 
thoughts ran, “ who had been of age 
some twenty years or so ; who was a 
diffident man, from the circumstances 
of his youth ; who was rather a grave 
man, from the tenor of his life ; who 


knew himself to be deficient in many 
little engaging qualities which he ad- 
mired in others, from having been long 
in a distant region, with nothing soften- 
ing near him ; who had no kind sisters 
to present to her ; who had no congen- 
ial home to make her known in ; who 
was a stranger in the land ; who had 
not a fortune to compensate, in any 
measure, for these defects ; who had 
nothing in his favor but his honest love 
and his general wish to do right, — sup- 
ose such a man were to come to this 
ouse, and were to yield to the captiva- 
tion of this charming girl, and were to 
persuade himself that he could hope to 
win her ; what a weakness it would 
be!” 

He softly opened his window, and 
looked out upon the serene river. Year 
after year so much allowance for the 
drifting of the ferry-boat, so many miles 
an hour the flowing of the stream, here 
the rushes, there the lilies, nothing un- 
certain or unquiet. 

Why should he be vexed or sore at 
heart? It was not his weakness that 
he had imagined. It was nobody’s, 
nobody’s within his knowledge, why 
should it trouble him ? And yet it did 
trouble him. And he thought — who 
has not thought for a moment, some- 
times — that it might be better to flow 
away monotonously, like the river, and 
to compound for its insensibility to hap- 
piness with its insensibility to pain. 


CHAPTER XVII. 
nobody’s rival. 

Before breakfast in the morning, 
Arthur walked out to look about him. 
As the morning was fine, and he had 
an hour on his hands, he crossed the? 
river by the ferry, and strolled along a 
footpath through some meadows. When 
he came back to the towing-path, he 
found the ferry-boat on the opposite 
side, and a gentleman hailing it and 
waiting to be taken over. 

This gentleman looked barely thirty. 
He was well dressed, of a sprightly 
and gay appearance, a well-knit figure, 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


1 17 


and a rich dark complexion. As Arthur 
came over the stile and down to the 
water’s edge, the lounger glanced at 
him for a moment, and then resumed 
his occupation of idly tossing stones 
into the water with his 'foot. There 
was something in his way of spurning 
them out of their places with his heel, 
and getting them into the required 
position, that Clennam thought had an 
air of cruelty in it. Most of us have 
more or less frequently derived a simi- 
lar impression from a man’s manner of 
doing some very little thing, — plucking 
a flower, clearing away an obstacle, or 
even destroying an insentient object. 

The gentleman’s thoughts were pre- 
occupied, as his face showed, and he 
took no notice of a fine Newfoundland 
dog, who watched him attentively, and 
watched every stone, too, in its turn, 
eager to spring into the river on receiv- 
ing his master’s sign. The ferry-boat 
came over, however, without his receiv- 
ing any sign, and when it grounded his 
master took him by the collar and 
walked him into it. 

“ Not this morning,” he said to the 
dog. “ You won’t do for ladies’ com- 
pany, dripping wet. Lie down.” 

Clennam followed the man and the 
dog into the boat, and took his seat. 
The dog did as he was ordered. The 
man remained standing, with his hands 
in his pockets, and towered between 
Clennam and the prospect. Man and 
dog both jumped lightly out as soon as 
they touched the other side, and went 
away. Clennam was glad to be rid of 
them. 

The church-clock struck the breakfast 
hour, as he walked up the little lane by 
, which the garden gate was approached. 
The moment he pulled the bell, a deep 
loud barking assailed him from within 
the wall. 

“ I heard no dog last night,” thought 
Clennam. The gate was opened by 
one of the rosy maids, and on the lawn 
were the Newfoundland dog and the 
man. 

“Miss Minnie is not down yet, gen- 
tlemen,” said the blushing portress, as 
they all came together in the garden. 
Then she said to the master of the dog, 
“ Mr. Clennam, sir,” and tripped away. 


“ Odd enough, Mr. Clennam, that 
we should have met just now,” said 
the man. Upon which the dog became 
mute. “ Allow me to introduce myself, 
— Henry Gowan. A pretty place this, 
and looks wonderfully well this morn- 
ing ! ” 

The manner was easy, and the voice 
agreeable ,* but still Clennam thought, 
that if he had not made that decided 
resolution to avoid falling in love with 
Pet, he would have taken a dislike to 
this Henry Gowan. 

“It’s new to you, I believe?” said 
this Gowan, when Arthur had extolled 
the place. 

“ Quite new. I made acquaintance 
with it only yesterday afternoon.” 

“ Ah ! Of course this is not its best 
aspect. It used to look charming in 
the spring, before they went away last 
time. I should like you to have seen it 
then.” 

But for that resolution so often re- 
called, Clennam might have wished 
him in the crater of Mount Etna, in 
return for this civility. 

“ I have had the pleasure of seeing it 
under many circumstances during the 
last three years, and it’s — a Paradise.” 

It was (at least it might have been, 
always excepting for that wise resolu- 
tion) like his dexterous impudence to 
call it a Paradise. He only called it a 
Paradise because he first saw her com- 
ing, and so made her out within her hear- 
ing to be an angel, Confusion to him ! 

And ah, how beaming she looked, 
and how glad ! How she caressed the 
dog, and how the dog knew her ! How 
expressive that heightened color in her 
face, that fluttered manner, her down- 
cast eyes, her irresolute happiness ! 
When had Clennam seen her look like 
this? Not that there was any reason 
why he might, could, would, or should 
have ever seen her look like this, or 
that he had ever hoped for himself to 
see her look like this ; but still — when 
had he ever known her do it ! 

He stood at a little distance from 
them. This Gowan, when he had 
talked about a Paradise, had gone up 
to her and taken her hand. The dog 
had put his great paws on her arm and 
laid his head against her dear bosom. 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


118 

She had laughed and welcomed them, 
and made far too much of the dog, far, 
far too much, — that is to say, supposing 
there had been any third person looking 
on who loved her. 

She disengaged herself now, and 
came to Clennam, and put her hand in 
his and wished him good morning, and 
gracefully made as if she would take his 
arm and be escorted into the house. 
This Gowan had no objection. No, he 
knew he was too safe- 

There was a passing cloud on Mr. 
Meagles’s good-humored face, when 
they all three (four, counting the dog, 
and he was the most objectionable but 
one of the party) came in to breakfast. 
Neither it, nor the touch of uneasiness 
on Mrs. Meagles’s as she directed her 
eyes towards it, was unobserved by 
Clennam. 

“Well, Gowan,” said Mr. Meagles, 
ev.an suppressing a sigh ; “ how goes 
tmPworld with you this morning? ” 

“ Much as usual, sir. Lion and I, 
being determined not to waste anything 
of our weekly visit, turned out early, 
and came over from Kingston, my 
present head-quarters, where I am 
making a sketch or two.” Then he 
told how he had met Mr. Clennam at 
the ferry, and they had come over to- 
gether. 

“Mrs. Gowan is well, Henry?” said 
Mrs. Meagles. (Clennam became at- 
tentive.) 

“My mother is quite well, thank 
you.” (Clennam became inattentive.) 
“ I have taken the liberty of making an 
addition to your family dinner-party to- 
day, which I hope will not be incon- 
venient to you or to Mr. Meagles. I 
could n’t very well get out of it,” he ex- 
plained, turning to the latter. “ The 
young fellow wrote to propose himself 
to me ; and as he is well connected, I 
thought you would not object to my 
transferring him here.” 

“ Who is the young fellow? ” asked 
Mr. Meagles with peculiar complacency. 

“ He is one of the Barnacles. Tite 
Barnacle’s son, Clarence Barnacle, who 
is in his father’s Department. I can at 
least guarantee that the river shall not 
suffer from his visit. He won’t set it 
on fire.” 


“ Ay, ay ?” said Meagles. “A Bar- 
nacle, is he ? We know something of 
that family, eh, Dan ? By George, they 
are at the top of thtf tree, though ! Let 
me see. What relation will this young 
fellow be to Lord Decimus now ? His 
Lordship married, in seventeen ninety- 
seven, Lady Jemima Bilberry, who was 
the second daughter by the third mar- 
riage — no ! There I am wrong ! That 
was Lady Seraphina, — Lady Jemima 
was the first daughter by the second 
marriage of the fifteenth Earl of Stilt- 
stalking with The Honorable Clemen- 
tina Toozellem. Very well. Now this 
young fellow’s father married a Stilt- 
stalking and his father married his 
cousin, who was a Barnacle. The father 
of that father w-ho married a Barnacle 
married a Joddleby. I am getting a 
little too far back, Gowan ; I want to 
make out what relation this young fel- 
low is to Lord Decimus.” 

“ That ’s easily stated. His father is 
nephew to Lord Decimus.” 

“ Nephew — to — Lord — Decimus,” 
Mr. Meagles luxuriously repeated w'ith 
his eyes shut, that he might have noth- 
ing to distract him from the full flavor 
of the genealogical tree. “ By George, 
you are right, Gowan. So he is.” 

“ Consequent^', Lord Decimus is his 
great-uncle.” 

“ But stop a bit ! ” said Mr. Meagles, 
opening his eyes with a fresh discovery. 
“ Then, on the mother’s side, Lady 
Stiltstalking is his great-aunt.” 

“ Of course she is.” 

“ Ay, ay, ay ! ” said Mr, Meagles, 
with much interest. “ Indeed, indeed ? 
We shall be glad to see him. We’ll 
entertain him as well as we can, in our 
humble way ; and we shall not starve 
him, I hope, at all events.” 

In the beginning of this dialogue, 
Clennam had expected some great harm- 
less outburst from Mr. Meagles, like 
that which had made him burst out of 
the Circumlocution Office, holding Doyce 
by the collar. But his good friend had 
a weakness which none of us need go 
into the next street to find, and which 
no amount of Circumlocution experience 
could long subdue in him. Clennam 
looked at Doyce ; but Doyce knew all 
about it beforehand, and looked at his 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


119 


plate, and made no sign, and said no 
word. 

“I am much obliged to you,” said 
Gowan, to conclude the subject. “ Clar- 
ence is a great ass, but he is one of the 
dearest and best fellows that ever 
lived ! ” 

It appeared, before the breakfast was 
over, that everybody whom this Gowan 
knew was either more or less of an ass, 
or more or less of a knave ; but was, 
notwithstanding, the most lovable, the 
most engaging, the simplest, truest, 
kindest, dearest, best fellow that ever 
lived. The process by which this un- 
varying result was attained, whatever 
the premises, might have been stated 
by Mr. Henry Gowan thus : “ I claim 
to be always book-keeping, with a pe- 
culiar nicety, in every man’s case, and 
posting up a careful little account of 
Good and Evil with him. I do this 
so conscientiously, that I am happy to 
tell you I find the most worthless of 
men to be the dearest old fellow too ; 
and am in a condition to make the 
gratifying report, that there is much 
less difference than you are inclined to 
suppose between an honest man and 
a scoundrel.” The effect of this cheer- 
ing discovery happened to be, that 
while he seemed to be scrupulously 
finding good in most men, he did in 
reality lower it where it was, and set it up 
where it was not ; but that was its only 
disagreeable or dangerous feature. 

It scarcely seemed, however, to afford 
Mr. Meagles as much satisfaction as 
the Barnacle genealogy had done. The 
cloud that Clennam had never seen 
upon his face before that morning fre- 
quently overcast it again ; and there 
was the same shadow of uneasy obser- 
vation of him on the comely face of his 
wife. More than once or twice when 
Pet caressed the dog, it appeared to 
Clennam that her father was unhappy 
in seeing her do it ; and in one partic- 
ular instance, when Gowan stood on 
the other side of the dog, and bent his 
head at the same time, Arthur fancied 
that he saw tears rise to Mr. Meagles’s 
eyes as he hurried out of the room. It 
was either the fact too, or he fancied, 
further, that Pet herself was not insen- 
sible to these little incidents ; that she 


tried, with a more delicate affection than 
usual, to express to her good father 
how much she loved him ; that it was 
on this account that she fell behind the 
rest, both as they went to church and as 
they returned from it, and took his arm. 
He could not have sworn but that, as he 
walked alone in the garden afterwards, 
he had an instantaneous glimpse of her 
in her father’s room, clinging to both 
her parents with the greatest tenderness, 
and weeping on her father’s shoulder. 

The latter part of the day turning out 
wet, they were fain to keep the house, 
look over Mr. Meagles’s collection, and 
beguile the time with conversation. 
This Gowan had plenty to say for him- 
self, and said it in an off-hand and 
amusing manner. He appeared to be 
an artist by profession, and to have 
been at Rome some time ; yet he had a 
slight, careless, amateur way with him 
— a perceptible limp, both in his devo- 
tion to art and his attainments — whicji 
Clennam could scarcely understands*^ 

He applied to Daniel Doyce for help, 
as they stood together looking out of 
window. 

“You know Mr. Gowan?” he said 
in a low voice. 

“ I have seen him here. Comes here 
every Sunday, when they are at home.” 

“ An artist, I infer from what he 
says? ” 

“ A sort of a one,” said Daniel Doyce, 
in a surly tone. 

“What sort of a one?” asked Clen- 
nam, with a smile. 

“ Why, he has sauntered into the 
Arts at a leisurely Pall-Mall pace,” 
said Doyce, “and I doubt if they care 
to be taken quite so coolly.” 

Pursuing his inquiries, Clennam 
found that the Gowan family were a 
very distant ramification of the Barna- 
cles ; and that the paternal Gowan, 
originally attached to a legation abroad, 
had been pensioned off as a Commission- 
er of nothing particular somewhere or 
other, and had died at his post with his 
drawn salary in his hand, nobly defend- 
ing it to the last extremity. In consid- 
eration of this eminent public service, 
the Barnacle then in power had recom- 
mended the Crown to bestow a pension 
of two or three hundred a year on his 


120 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


widow ; to which the next Barnacle in 
power had added certain shady and se- 
date apartments in the Palace at Hamp- 
ton Court, where the old lady still lived, 
deploring the degeneracy of the times, 
in company with several other old ladies 
of both sexes. Her son, Mr. Henry 
Gowan, inheriting from his father, the 
Commissioner, that very questionable 
help in life, a very small independence, 
had been difficult to settle ; the rather 
as public appointments chanced to be 
scarce, and his genius, during his ear- 
lier manhood, was of that exclusively 
agricultural character which applies it- 
self to the cultivation of wild oats. At 
last he had declared that he would be- 
come a Painter ; partly because he had 
always had an idle knack that way, and 
partly to grieve the souls of the Barna- 
cles in chief who had not provided for 
him. So it had come to pass succes- 
sn^y, first, that several distinguished 
laVlieS had been frightfully shocked ; 
then, that portfolios ofhis performances 
had been handed about o’ nights, and 
declared with ecstasy to be perfect 
Claudes, perfect Cuyps, perfect phenom- 
ena ; then, that LordDecimushad bought 
his picture, and had asked the Presi- 
dent and Council to dinner at a blow, 
and had said, with his own magnificent 
gravity, “ Do you know, there appears 
to me to be really immense merit in 
that work ? and, in short, that peo- 
ple of condition had absolutely taken 
pains to bring him into fashion. But 
somehow it had all failed. The preju- 
diced public had stood out against it ob- 
stinately. They had determined not to 
admire Lord Decimus’s picture. They 
determined to believe that in every 
service, except their own, a man must 
qualify himself, by striving, early and 
late, and by working heart and soul, 
might and main. So now Mr. Gowan, 
like that worn-out old coffin which never 
was Mahomet’s nor anybody else’s, hung 
midway between two points : jaundiced 
and jealous as to the one he had left ; 
jaundiced and jealous as to the other he 
could n’t reach. 

Such was the substance of Clennam’s 
discoveries concerning him made that 
rainy Sunday afternoon and after- 
wards. . 


About an hour or so after dinner-time, 
Young Barnacle appeared, attended by 
his eye-glass ; in honor of whose family 
connections Mr. Meagles had cash- 
iered the pretty parlor-maids for the 
day, and placed on duty in their stead 
two dingy men. Young Barnacle was 
in the last degree amazed and discon- 
certed at sight of Arthur, and had mur- 
mured involuntarily, “ Look here ! — 
Upon my soul, you know ! ” before his 
presence of mind returned. 

Even then, he was obliged 'to em- 
brace the earliest opportunity of taking 
his friend into a window', and saying, in 
a nasal way that was a part of his gen- 
eral debility, — 

“ I want to speak to you, Gowan. I 
say. Look here. Who is that fel- 
low' ? ” 

“A friend of our host’s. None of 
mine.” 

“ He ’s a most ferocious Radical, you 
know,” said Young Barnacle. 

“ Is he ? How do you know? ” 

“ Egod, sir, he w ; as Pitching into our 
people the other day, in the most tre- 
mendous manner. Went up to our 
place and Pitched into my father to that 
extent that it was necessary to order 
him out. Came back to our depart- 
ment, and Pitched into me. Look 
here. You never saw such a fel- 
low.” 

“What did he want?” 

“ Egod, sir,” returned Young Barna- 
cle, “ he said he wanted to know* you 
know ! Pervaded our department — 
without an appointment — and said he 
wanted to know' ! ” 

The stare of indignant wonder with 
which Young Barnacle accompanied 
this disclosure would have strained his 
eyes injuriously but for the opportune 
relief of dinner. Mr. Meagles (who 
had been extremely solicitous to know 
how his uncle and aunt were) begged 
him to conduct Mrs. Meagles to the 
dining-room. And when he sat on Mrs. 
Meagles’s right hand, Mr. Meagles 
looked as gratified as if his w'hole fam- 
ily w'ere there. 

All the natural charm of the previous 
day was gone. The eaters of the din- 
ner, like the dinner itself, were luke- 
warm, insipid, over-done, — and all 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


121 


owing to this poor little dull Young Bar- 
nacle. Conversationless at any time, he 
was now the victim of a weakness spe- 
cial to the occasion, and solely referable 
to Clennam. He was under a pressing 
and continual necessity of looking at 
that gentleman, which occasioned his 
eye-glass to get into his soup, into his 
wineglass, into Mrs. M eagles’s plate, to 
hang down his back like a bell-rope, 
and be several times disgracefully re- 
stored to his bosom by one of the dingy 
men. Weakened in mind by his fre- 
quent losses of this instrument, and its 
determination not to stick in his eye, 
and more and more enfeebled in intel- 
lect every time he looked at the myste- 
rious Clennam, he applied spoons to his 
eye, forks, and other foreign matters 
connected with the furniture of the din- 
ner-table. His discovery of these mis- 
takes greatly increased his difficulties, 
but never released him from the neces- 
sity of looking at Clennam. And when- 
ever Clennam spoke, this ill-starred 
young man was clearly seized with a 
dread that he was coming, by some art- 
ful device, round to that point of want- 
ing to know, you know. 

It may be questioned, therefore, 
whether any one but Mr. Meagles had 
much enjoyment of the time. Mr. 
Meagles, however, thoroughly enjoyed 
Young Barnacle. As a mere flask of 
the golden water in the tale became a 
full fountain when it was poured out, so 
Mr. Meagles seemed to feel that this 
small spice of Barnacle imparted to his 
table the flavor of the whole family-tree. 
In its presence, his frank, fine, genuine 
qualities paled : he was not so easy, he 
was not so natural, he was striving after 
something that did not belong to him, 
he was not himself. What a strange 
peculiarity on the part of Mr. Meagles, 
and where should we find such another 
case ! 

At last the wet Sunday wore itself 
out in a wet night ; and Young Barna- 
cle went home in a cab, feebly smok- 
ing ; and the objectionable Gowan went 
away on foot, accompanied by the 
objectionable dog. Pet had taken the 
most amiable pains all day to be friend- 
ly with Clennam, but Clennam had 
been a little reserved since breakfast, — 


that is to say, would have been, if he 
had loved her. 

When he had gone to his own room, 
and had again thrown himself into the 
chair by the fire, Mr. Doyce knocked 
at the door, candle in hand, to ask him 
how and at what hour he purposed re- 
turning on the morrow? After settling 
this question, he said a word to Mr. 
Doyce about this Gowan, — who would 
have run in his head a good deal, if he 
had been his rival. 

“ Those are not good prospects for a 
painter,” said Clennam. 

“ No,” returned Doyce. 

Mr. Doyce stood, chamber-candle- 
stick in hand, the other hand in his 
pocket, looking hard at the flame of 
his candle, with a certain quiet percep- 
tion in his face that they were going to 
say something more. 

“ I thought our good friend a little 
changed, and out of spirits, after „be 
came this morning?” said Clennam. 

“Yes,” returned Doyce. 

“But not his daughter ?” said Clen- 
nam. 

“No,” said Doyce. 

There was a pause on both sides. 
Mr. Doyce, still looking at the flame 
of his candle, slowly resumed : — 

“ The truth is, he has twice taken 
his daughter abroad, in the hope of 
separating her from Mr. Gowan. He 
rather thinks she js disposed to like 
him, and he has painful doubts (I quite 
agree with him, as I dare say you do), 
of the hopefulness ot such a marriage.” 

“There — ’’Clennam choked, and 
coughed, and stopped. 

“ Yes, you have taken cold,” said 
Daniel Doyce. But without looking 
at him. 

“ — There is an engagement between 
them, of course?” said Clennam, 
airily. 

“ No, as I am told, certainly not. 
It has been solicited on the gentleman’s 
part, but none has been made. Since 
their recent return, our friend has yield- 
ed to a weekly visit, but that is. the 
utmost. Minnie would not deceive her 
father and mother. You have travelled 
with them, and I believe you know 
what a bond there is among them, 
extending even beyond this present 


122 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


life. All that there is between Miss 
Minnie and Mr. Gowan I have no 
doubt we see.” 

“Ah! We see enough!” cried 
Arthur. 

Mr. Doyce wished him good night, 
in the tone of a man who had heard a 
mournful, not to say despairing, ex- 
clamation, and who sought to infuse 
some encouragement and hope into 
the mind of the person by whom it had 
been uttered. Such tone was probably 
a part of his oddity, as one of a crotch- 
ety band ; for how could he have 
heard anything of that kind without 
Clennam’s hearing it, too ? 

The rain fell heavily on the roof, and 
pattered on the ground, and dripped 
among the evergreens and the leafless 
branches of the trees. The rain fell 
heavily, drearily. It was a night of 
tears. 

If Clennam had not decided against 
falling in love with Pet ; if he had had 
the weakness to do it ; if he had, little 
by little, persuaded himself to set all 
the earnestness of his nature, all the 
might of his hope, and all the wealth 
of his matured character, on that cast, — 
if he had done this, and found that all 
was lost, he would have been, that 
night, unutterably miserable. As it 
was^— 

As it was, the rain fell heavily, 
drearily. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

LITTLE DORRIT’s LOVER. 

Little Dorrit had not attained her 
twenty-second birthday without finding 
a lover. Even in the sallow Marshal- 
sea, the ever-young Archer shot off a 
few featherless arrows now and then 
from a mouldy bow, and winged a col- 
legian or two. 

Little Dorrit’s lover, however, was 
not a collegian. He was the sentimen- 
tal son of a turnkey. His father hoped, 
in the fulness of time, to leave him the 
inheritance of an unstained key ; and 
had from his early youth familiarized 
him with the duties of his office, and 
with an ambition to retain the prison- | 


lock in the family. While the succes- 
sion was yet in abeyance, he assisted 
his mother in the conduct of a snug 
tobacco business round the corner of 
Horsemonger Lane (his father being 
a non-resident turnkey), which could 
usually command a neat connection 
within the college walls. 

Years agone, when the object of his 
affections was wont to sit in her little 
arm-chair by the high lodge-fender, 
Young John (family name, Chivery), a 
year older than herself, had eyed her 
with admiring wonder. When he had 
played with her in the yard, his favorite 

ame had been to counterfeit locking 

er up in corners, and to counterfeit 
letting her out for real kisses. When 
he grew tall enough to peep through the 
keyhole of the great lock of the main 
door, he had divers times set down his 
father’s dinner, or supper, to get on as 
it might on the outer side thereof, while 
he stood taking cold in one eye by dint 
of peeping at her through that airy per- 
spective. 

If Young John had ever slackened 
in his truth in the less penetrable days 
of his boyhood, when youth is prone to 
wear its boots unlaced and is happily 
unconscious of digestive organs, he had 
soon strung it up again and screwed it 
tight. At nineteen, his hand had in- 
scribed in chalk on that part of the wall 
which fronted her lodging, on the occa- 
sion of her birthday, “ Welcome, sweet 
nursling of the Fairies!” At twenty- 
three, the same hand falteringly present- 
ed cigars on Sundays to the Father of 
the Marshalsea, and father of the queen 
of his soul. 

Young John was small of stature, 
with rather weak legs and very weak 
light hair. One of his eyes (perhaps 
the eye that used to peep through the 
keyhole) was also weak, and looked 
larger than the other, as if it could n’t 
collect itself. Young John was gentle 
likewise. But he was great of soul. 
Poetical, expansive, faithful. 

Though too humble before the ruler 
of his heart to be sanguine, Young John 
had considered the object of his attach- 
ment in all its lights and shades. Fol- 
lowing it out to blissful results, he had 
described, without self-commendation, 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


123 


a fitness in it. Say things prospered, 
and they were united. She, the child 
of the Marshalsea ; he, the lock-keeper. 
There was a fitness in that. Say he 
became a resident turnkey. She would 
officially succeed to the chamber she 
had rented so long. There was a beau- 
tiful propriety in that. It looked over 
the wall, if you stood on tiptoe ; and, 
with a trellis-work of scarlet beans and 
a canary or so, would become a very 
arbor. There was a charming idea 
in that. Then, being all in all to one 
another, there was even an appropriate 
grace in the lock. With the world shut 
out (except that part of it which would 
be shut in) ; with its troubles and dis- 
turbances only known to them by hear- 
say, as they would be described by the 
pilgrims tarrying with them on their way 
to the Insolvent Shrine ; with the ar- 
bor above, and the lodge below ; they 
would glide down the stream of time, 
in pastoral domestic happiness. Young 
John drew tears from his eyes by finish- 
ing the picture with a tombstone in the 
adjoining churchyard, close against the 
prison wall, bearing the following touch- 
ing inscription : “ Sacred to the Mem- 

ory of John Chivery, Sixty years 
Turnkey, and fifty years Head Turn- 
key, Of the neighboring Marshalsea, 
Who departed this life, universally re- 
spected, on the thirty-first of Decem- 
ber, One thousand eight hundred and 
eighty-six, Aged eighty-three years. 
Also of his truly beloved and truly lov- 
ing wife, Amy, whose maiden name was 
Dorrit, Who survived his loss not quite 
forty-eight hours, And who breathed her 
last in the Marshalsea aforesaid. There 
she was born, There she lived, There 
she died.” 

The Chivery parents were not igno- 
rant of their son’s attachment, — indeed 
it had, on some exceptional occasions, 
thrown him into a state of mind that 
had impelled him to conduct himself 
with irascibility towards the customers, 
and damage the business ; but they, in 
their turns, had worked it out to desira- 
ble conclusions. Mrs. Chivery, a pru- 
dent woman, had desired her husband 
to take notice that their John’s pros- 
pects of the Lock would certainly be 
strengthened by an alliance with Miss 


Dorrit, who had herself a kind of claim 
upon the college, and was much re- 
spected there. Mrs. Chivery had de- 
sired her husband to take notice that if, 
on the one hand, their John had means 
and a post of trust, on the other hand, 
Miss Dorrit had family ; and that her 
(Mrs. Chivery’s) sentiment was, that 
two halves made a whole. Mrs. Chiv- 
ery, speaking as a mother and not as a 
diplomatist, had then, from a different 
point of view, desired her husband to 
recollect that their John had never been 
strong, and that his love had fretted and 
worrited him enough as it was, without 
his being driven to do himself a mis- 
chief, as nobody could n’t say he would 
n’t be if he was crossed. These argu- 
ments had so powerfully influenced the 
mind of Mr. Chivery, who was a man 
of few words, that he had, on sundry 
Sunday mornings, given his boy what 
he termed “a lucky touch,” signifying 
that he considered such commendation 
of him to Good Fortune, preparatory 
to his that day declaring his passion 
and becoming triumphant. But Young 
John had never taken courage to make 
the declaration ; and it was principally 
on these occasions that he had returned 
excited to the tobacco shop, and flown 
at the customers. 

In this affair, as in every other, Little 
Dorrit herself was the last person con- 
sidered. Her brother and sister were 
aware of it, and attained a sort of sta- 
tion by making a peg of it on which to 
air the miserably ragged old fiction of 
the family gentility. Her sister assert- 
ed the family gentility by flouting the 
poor swain as he loitered about the 
prison for glimpses of his dear. Tip 
asserted the family gentility, and his 
own, by coming out in the character 
of the aristocratic brother, and loftily 
swaggering in the little skittle-ground 
respecting seizures by the scruff of the 
neck, which there were looming proba- 
bilities of some gentleman unknown 
executing on some little puppy not 
mentioned. These were not the only 
members of the Dorrit family who 
turned it to account. No, no. The 
Father of the Marshalsea was supposed 
to know nothing about the matter, of 
course : his poor dignity could not see 


124 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


so low. But he took the cigars on Sun- 
days, and was glad to get them ; and 
sometimes even condescended to walk 
up and down the yard with the donor 
(who was proud and hopeful then), and 
benignantly to smoke one in his society. 
With no less readiness and condescen- 
sion did he receive attentions from 
Chivery Senior, who always relinquished 
his arm-chair and newspaper to him, 
when he came into the lodge during 
one of his spells of duty ; and who had 
even mentioned to him, that if he would 
like, at any time after dusk, quietly to 
step out into the forecourt and take a 
look at the street, there was not much 
to prevent him. If he did not avail 
himself of this latter civility, it was on- 
ly because he had lost the relish for it ; 
inasmuch as he took everything else 
he could get, and would say at times, 
“ Extremely civil person, Chivery ; very 
attentive man and very respectful. 
Young Chivery, too ; really almost with 
a delicate perception of one’s position 
here. A very well conducted family 
indeed, the Chiveries. Their behavior 
gratifies me.” 

The devoted Young John all this 
time regarded the family with rever- 
ence. He never dreamed of disput- 
ing their pretensions, but did homage 
to the miserable Mumbo Jumbo they 
paraded. As to resenting any affront 
from her brother, he would have felt, 
even if he had not naturally been of a 
most pacific disposition, that to wag 
his tongue or lift his hand against that 
sacred gentleman would be an unhal- 
lowed act. He was sorry that his noble 
mind should take offence ; still, he felt 
the fact to be not incompatible with its 
nobility, and sought to propitiate and 
conciliate that gallant soul. Her father, 
a gentleman in misfortune, — a gen- 
tleman of a fine spirit and courtly man- 
ners, who always bore with him, — he 
deeply honored. Her sister he consid- 
ered somewhat vain and proud, but a 
young lady of infinite accomplishments, 
who could not forget the past. It was 
an instinctive testimony to Little Dor- 
rit’s worth, and difference from all the 
rest, that the poor young fellow honored 
and loved her for being simply what she 
was. 


The tobacco business round the cor- 
ner of Horsemonger Lane was carried 
on in a rural establishment one story 
high, which had the benefit of the air 
from the yards of Horsemonger Lane 
Jail, and the advantage of a retired walk 
under the wall of that pleasant estab- 
lishment. The business was of too 
modest a character to support a life-size 
Highlander, but it maintained a little 
one on a bracket on the door-post, 
who looked like a fallen Cherub that 
had found it necessary to take to a 
kilt. 

From the portal thus decorated, one 
Sunday, after an early dinner of baked 
viands, Young John issued forth on 
his usual Sunday errand ; not empty- 
handed, but with his offering of cigars. 
He was neatly attired in a plum-colored 
coat, with as large a collar of black 
velvet as his figure could carry ; a silken 
waistcoat, bedecked with golden sprigs ; 
a chaste neckerchief much in vogue 
at that day, representing a preserve of 
lilac pheasants on a buff ground ; pan- 
taloons so highly decorated with side- 
stripes, that each leg was a three- 
stringed lute ; and a hat of state, very 
high and hard. When the prudent 
Mrs. Chivery perceived that in addition 
to these adornments her John carried 
a pair of white kid gloves, and a cane 
like a little finger-post, surmounted by 
an ivory hand marshalling him the way 
that he should go ; and when she saw 
him, in this heavy marching order, turn 
the corner to the right ; she remarked 
to Mr. Chivery who was at home at 
the time, that she thought she knew 
which way the wind blew. 

The collegians were entertaining a 
considerable number of visitors that 
Sunday afternoon, and their Father 
kept his room for the purpose of receiv- 
ing presentations. After making the 
tour of the yard, Little Dorrit’s lover 
with a hurried heart went up stairs, 
and knocked with his knuckles at the 
Father’s door. 

“ Come in, come in ! ” said a gracious 
voice. The Father’s voice, her father’s, 
the Marshalsea’s father’s. He was 
seated in his black velvet cap, with his 
newspaper, three-and-sixpence acciden- 
tally left qn the table, and two chairs 













LITTLE DORRIT. 


12 s 


arranged. Everything prepared for 
holding his Court. 

“Ah, Young John 1 How do you 
do, how do you do?” 

“ Pretty well, I thank you, sir. I 
hope you are the same.” 

“Yes, John Chivery ; yes. Nothing 
to complain of.” 

“ I have taken the liberty, sir, of — ” 

“ Eh ? ” The F ather of the Marshal- 
sea always lifted up his eyebrows at 
this point, and became amiably dis- 
traught and smilingly absent in mind. 

“ — A few cigars, sir.” 

“Oh!” (For the moment, exces- 
sively surprised.) “Thank you, Young 
John, thank you. But really, I am 
afraid I am too — No? Well then, 
I will say no more about it. Put them 
on the mantel-shelf, if you please, Young 
John. And sit down, sit down. You 
are not a stranger, John.” 

“ Thank you, sir, I am sure. — Miss,” 
— here Young John turned the great hat 
round and round upon his left hand, 
like a slowly twirling mouse-cage, — 
“Miss Amy quite well, sir?” 

“ Yes, John, yes ; very well. She is 
out.” 

“ Indeed, sir ? ” 

“ Yes, John. Miss Amy is gone for 
an airing. My young people all go out 
a good deal. But at their time of life, 
it’s natural, John.” 

“ Very much so, I am sure, sir.” 

“ An airing. An airing. Yes.” He 
was blandly tapping his fingers on the 
table, and casting his eyes up at the 
window. “ Amy has gone for an air- 
ing on the Iron Bridge. She has be- 
come quite partial to the Iron Bridge 
of late, and seems to like to walk there 
better than anywhere.” He returned 
to conversation. “Your father is not 
on duty at present, I think, John?” 

“No, sir, he comes on later in the 
afternoon.” Another twirl of the great 
hat, and then Young John said, rising, 
“ I am afraid I must wish you good 
day, sir.” 

“ So soon? Good day, Young John. 
Nay, nay,” with the utmost condescen- 
sion, “never mind your glove, John. 
Shake hands with it on. You are no 
stranger here, you know.” 

Highly gratified by the kindness of 


his reception, Young John descended 
the staircase. On his way down he 
met some collegians bringing up visitors 
to be presented, and at that moment 
Mr. Dorrit happened to call over the 
banisters with particular distinctness, 
“Much obliged to you for your little 
testimonial, John ! ” 

Little Dorrit’s lover very soon laid 
down his penny on the toll-plate of the 
Iron Bridge, and came upon it looking 
about him for the well-known and well- 
beloved figure. At first he feared she 
was not there ; but as he walked on 
towards the Middlesex side, he saw 
her standing still, looking at the water. 
She was absorbed in thought, and he 
wondered what she might be thinking 
about. There were the piles of city 
roofs and chimneys, more free from 
smoke than on week-days ; and there 
were the distant masts and steeples. 
Perhaps she was thinking about them. 

Little Dorrit mused so long, and 
was so entirely preoccupied, that al- 
though her lover stood quiet for what 
he thought was a long time, and twice 
or thrice retired and came back again 
to the former spot, still she did not 
move. So, in the end, he made up his 
mind to go on, and seem to come upon 
her casually in passing, and speak to 
her. The place was quiet, and now or 
never was the time to speak to her. 

He walked on, and she did not ap- 
pear to hear his steps until he was close 
upon her. When he said, “ Miss Dor- 
rit ! ” she started and fell back from 
him, with an expression in her face of 
fright and something like dislike that 
caused him unutterable dismay. She 
had often avoided him before, — always, 
indeed, for a long, long while. She had 
turned away and glided off, so often, 
when she had seen him coming towards 
her, that the unfortunate Young John 
could not think it accidental. But he 
had hoped that it might be shyness, her 
retiring character, her foreknowledge of 
the state of his heart, anything short of 
aversion. Now that momentary look 
had said, “ You, of all people ! I would 
rather have seen any one on earth than 
you ! ” 

It was but a momentary look, inas- 
much as she checked it, and said in her 


.126 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


soft little voice, “ O Mr. John ! Is it 
you? ” But she felt what it had been, 
as he felt what it had been ; and they 
stood looking at one another equally 
confused. 

“ Miss Amy, I am afraid I disturbed 
you by speaking to you.” 

“ Yes, rather. I — I came here to 
be alone, and I thought I was.” 

“ Miss Amy, I took the liberty of 
walking this way, because Mr. Dcrrit 
chanced to mention, when I called upon 
him just now, that you — ” 

She caused him more dismay than 
before by suddenly murmuring, “ O fa- 
ther, father ! ” in a heart-rending tone, 
and turning her face away. 

“ Miss Amy, I hope I don’t give you 
any uneasiness by naming Mr. Dorrit. 
I assure you I found him very well, and 
in the best of spirits, and he showed me 
even more than his usual kindness ; be- 
ing so very kind as to say that I was 
not a stranger there, and in all ways 
gratifying me very much.” 

To the inexpressible consternation of 
her lover, Little Dorrit, with her hands 
to her averted face, and rocking herself 
where she stood, as if she were in pain, 
murmured, “ O father, how can you ! 
O dear, dear father, how can you, can 
you do it ! ” 

The poor fellow stood gazing at her, 
overflowing with sympathy, but not 
knowing what to make of this, until, 
having taken out her handkerchief, 
and put it to her still averted face, she 
hurried away. At first lie remained 
stock still ; then hurried after her. 

“Miss Amy, pray ! Will you have 
the goodness to stop a moment. Miss 
Amy, if it comes to that, let me go. I 
shall go out of my senses, if I have to 
think that I have driven you away like 
this.” 

His trembling voice and unfeigned 
earnestness brought Little Dorrit to a 
stop. “O, I don’t know what to do,” 
she cried, — “I don’t know what to 
do !” 

To Young John, who had never seen 
her bereft of her quiet self-command, 
who had seen her from her infancy ever 
so reliable and self- suppressed, there 
was a shock in her distress, and in hav- 
ing to associate himself with it as its 


cause, that shook him from his great 
hat to the pavement. He felt it ne- 
cessary to explain himself. He might 
be misunderstood, — supposed to mean 
something, or to have done something, 
that had never entered into his imagi- 
nation. He begged her to hear hitn 
explain himself, as the greatest favor 
she could show him. 

“ Miss Amy, I know very well that 
your family is far above mine. It were 
vain to conceal it. There never was 
a Chivery a gentleman that ever I heard 
of, and I will not commit the meanness 
of making a false representation on a 
subject so momentous. Miss Amy, I 
know very well that your high-souled 
brother and likewise your spirited sis- 
ter spurn me from a heighth. What I 
have to do is to respect them, to wish 
to be admitted to their friendship, to 
look up at the eminence on which they 
are placed, from my lowlier station, — 
for, whether viewed as tobacco or 
viewed as the lock, I well know it is 
lowly, — and ever wish them well and 
happy.” 

There really was a genuineness in 
the poor fellow, and a contrast between 
the hardness of his hat and the softness 
of his heart (albeit, perhaps, of his 
head, too) that was moving. Little 
Dorrit entreated him to disparage nei- 
ther himself nor his station, and, above 
all things, to divest himself of any idea 
that she supposed hers to be superior. 
This gave him a little comfort. 

“ Miss Amy,” he then stammered, 
“ I have had for a long time — ages 
they seem to me — Revolving ages — a 
heart-cherished wish to say something 
to you. May I say it?” 

Little Dorrit involuntarily started 
from his side again, with the faintest 
shadow of her former look ; conquering 
that, she went on at great speed half 
across the bridge without replying. 

“May I — Miss Amy, I but ask the 
question humbly — may I say it? I 
have been so unlucky already in giving 
you pain, without having any such in- 
tentions, before the holy Heavens ! 
that there is no fear of my saying it un- 
less I have your leave. I can be miser- 
able alone, I can be cut up by myself ; 
why should I also make miserable and 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


127 


cut up one that I would fling myself 
off that parapet to give half a moment’s 
joy to! Not that that’s much to do, 
for I’d do it for twopence.” 

The mournfulness of his spirits, and 
the gorgeousness of his appearance, 
might have made him ridiculous, but 
that his delicacy made him respectable. 
Little Dorrit learnt from it what to do. 

“If you please, John Chi very,” she 
returned, trembling, but in a quiet way, 
“ since you are so considerate as to ask 
me whether you shall say any more, — 
if you please, no.” 

“ Never, Miss Amy ? ” 

“ No, if you please. Never.” 

“ O Lord ! ” gasped Young John. 

“But perhaps, you will let me, in- 
stead, say something to you. I want to 
say it earnestly, and with as plain a 
meaning as it is possible to express. 
When you think of us, John, — I mean 
my brother and sister and me, — don’t 
think of us as being any different from 
the rest ; for, whatever we once were 
(which I hardly know), we ceased to be 
long ago, and never can be any more. 
It will be much .better for you, and 
much better for others, if you will do 
that, instead of what you are doing 
now.” 

Young John dolefully protested that 
he W'ould try to bear it in mind, and 
would be heartily glad to do anything 
she w'ished. 

“As to me,” said Little Dorrit, 
“ think as little of me as you can ; the 
less, the better. When you think of 
me at all, John, let it only be as the 
child you have seen grow up in the 
prison, w’ith one set of duties always oc- 
cupying her ; as a weak, retired, con- 
tented, unprotected girl. I particularly 
want you to remember, that when I 
come outside the gate, I am unprotect- 
ed and solitary.” 

He would try to do anything she 
wished. But why did Miss Amy so 
much want him to remember that? 

“ Because,” returned Little Dorrit, 
“ I know I can then quite trust you not 
to forget to-day, and not to say any 
more to me. You are so generous that 
I know I can trust to you for that ; and 
I do, and I always will. I am going to 
show you, at once, that I fully trust 


you. I like this place where we are 
speaking better than any place I 
know ; her slight color had faded, but 
her lover thought he saw it coming back 
just then ; “ and I may be often here. 
I know it is only necessary for me to 
tell you so, to be quite sure that you 
will never come here again in search of 
me. And I am — quite sure ! ” 

She might rely upon it, said Young 
John. He was a miserable w'retch, but 
her word was more than a law for him. 

“And good by, John,” said Little 
Dorrit. “And I hope you will have a 
good wdfe one day, and be a happy man. 
1 am sure you will deserve to be happy, 
and you will be, John.” 

As she held out her hand to him with 
these words, the heart that was under 
the waistcoat of sprigs — mere slop- 
work, if the truth must be known — 
swelled to the size of the heart of a gen- 
tleman; and the poor common little 
fellow, having no room to hold it, burst 
into tears. 

“ O, don’t cry,” said Little Dorrit, 
piteously. “ Don’t, don’t ! Good by, 
John. God bless you !” 

“ Good by, Miss Amy, Good by ! ” 
And so he left her : first observing 
that she sat down on the corner of a 
seat, and not only rested her little hand 
upon the rough wall, but laid her face 
against it too, as if her head were heavy, 
and her mind w ere sad. 

It was an affecting illustration of the 
fallacy of human projects, to behold 
her lover with the great hat pulled over 
his eyes, the velvet collar turned up as 
if it rained, the plum-colored coat but- 
toned to conceal the silken waistcoat of 
golden sprigs, and the little direction- 
post pointing inexorably home, creep- 
ing along by the w'orst back-streets, 
and composing, as he went, the follow- 
ing new inscription for a tombstone in 
Saint George’s churchyard: — 

“ Here lie the mortal remains of 
John Chivery, Never anything worth 
mentioning, Who died about the end of 
the year one thousand eight hundred 
and tw'enty-six, Of a broken heart. Re- 
questing with his last breath that the 
word Amy might be inscribed over his 
ashes, Which was accordingly directed 
to be done, By his afflicted Parents.” 


128 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


CHAPTER XIX. 

THE FATHER OF THE MARSHALSEA 
IN TWO OR THREE RELATIONS. 

The brothers William and Frederick 
Dorrit, walking up and down the col- 
lege-yard, — of course on the aristocrat- 
ic or Pump side, for the Father made it 
a point of his state to be chary of going 
among his children on the Poor side, 
except on Sunday mornings, Christmas 
days, and other occasions of ceremony, 
in the observance whereof he was very 
unctual, and at which times he laid 
is hand upon the heads of their infants, 
and blessed those young Insolvents 
with a benignity that was highly edify- 
ing, — the brothers, walking up and 
down the college-yard together, were a 
memorable sight. Frederick the free 
was so humbled, bowed, withered, 
and faded ; William the bond was so 
courtly, condescending, and benevo- 
lently conscious of a position ; that in 
this regard only, if in no other, the 
brothers were a spectacle to wonder at. 

They walked up and down the yard, 
on the evening of Little Dorrit’s Sun- 
day interview with her lover on the 
Iron Bridge. The cares of state were 
over for that day, the drawing-room 
had been well attended, several new 
presentations had taken place, the 
three and sixpence accidentally left on 
the table had accidentally increased 
to twelve shillings, and the Father of 
the Marshalsea refreshed himself with 
a whiff of cigar. As he walked up and 
down, affably accommodating his step 
to the shuffle of his brother, not proud 
in his superiority, but considerate of 
that poor creature, bearing with him, 
and breathing toleration of l>is infirmi- 
ties in every little^puff of smoke that 
issued from his lips and aspired to get 
over the spiked wall, he was a sight to 
wonder at. 

His brother Frederick of the dim eye, 
palsied hand, bent form, and groping 
mind, submissively shuffled at his side, 
accepting his patronage as he accepted 
every incident of the labyrinthian world 
in which he had got lost. He held the 
usual screwed bit of whity-brown paper 
in his hand, from which he ever and 


1 again unscrewed a spare pinch of snuff. 
That falteringly taken, he would glance 
at his brother not unadmiringly, put 
his hands behind him, and shuffle on 
so at his side until he took another 
pinch, or stood still to look about him, 

~ perchance suddenly missing his clar- 
ionet. 

The college visitors were melting 
away as the shades of night drew on, 
but the yard was still pretty full, the 
collegians being mostly out, seeing 
their friends to the lodge. As the 
brothers paced the yard, William the 
bond looked about him to receive 
salutes, returned them by graciously 
lifting off his hat, and, with an engaging 
air, prevented Frederick the free from 
running against the company, or being 
jostled against the wall. The collegians 
as a body were not easily impressible, 
but even they, according to their?vari- 
ous ways of wondering, appeared to find 
in the two brothers a sight to wonder at. 

“You are a little low this evening, 
Frederick,” said the Father of the 
Marshalsea. “ Anything the matter ? ” 

“The matter?” He stared for a 
moment, and then dropped his head 
and eyes again. “ No, William, no. 
Nothing is the matter.” 

“ If you could be persuaded to smart- 
en yourself up a little, Frederick — ” 

“ Ay, ay ! ” said the old man, hur- 
riedly. “ But I can’t be. I can’t be. 
Don’t talk so. That ’s all over.” 

The Father of the Marshalsea glanced 
at a passing collegian with whom he j 
was on friendly terms, as who should 
say, “ An enfeebled old man, this ; but 
he is my brother, sir, my brother, and j 
the voice of Nature is potent ! ” and \ 
steered his brother clear of tire handle 
of the pump by the threadbare sleeve. i 
Nothing would have been wanting to j 
the perfection of his character as a fra- | 
ternal guide, philosopher, and friend, * 
if he had only steered his brother clear I 
of ruin, instead of bringing it upon j 
him. 

“ I think, William,” said the object j 
of his affectionate consideration, “ that 
I am tired, and will go home to bed.” 

“My dear Frederick,” returned the 
other. “ Don’t let me detain you ; ; 
don’t sacrifice your inclinations to me.” i 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


129 


“ Late hours, and a heated atmos- 
phere, and years, I suppose,” said 
Frederick, “weaken me.” 

“ My dear Frederick,” returned the 
Father of the Marshalsea, “do you 
think you are sufficiently careful of 
yourself? Do. you think your habits 
are as precise and methodical as — shall 
I say as mine are ? Not to revert again 
to that little eccentricity which I have 
mentioned just now, I doubt if you take 
air and exercise enough, Frederick. 
Here is the parade, always at your ser- 
vice. Why not use it more regularly 
than you do ? ” 

“ Hah ! ” sighed the other. “ Yes, 
yes, yes, yes.” 

“ But it is of no use saying yes, yes, 
my dear Frederick,” the Father of the 
Marshalsea in his mild wisdom persisted, 
“unless you act on that assent. Con- 
sider my case, Frederick. I am a kind 
of example. Necessity and time have 
taught me what to do. At certain 
stated hours of the day, you will find 
me on the parade, in my room, in the 
lodge, reading the paper, receiving 
company, eating and drinking. I have 
impressed upon Amy during many 
years, that I must have my meals (for 
instance) punctually. Amy has grown 
up in a sen^e of the importance of these 
arrangements, and you know what a 
good girl she is.” 

The brother only sighed again, as he 
plodded dreamily along, “ Hah ! Yes, 
yes, yes, yes.” 

“ My dear fellow,” said the Father of 
the Marahalsea, laying his hand upon 
his shoulder, and mildly rallying him, — 
mildly, because of his weakness, poor 
dear soul, — “ you said that before, and 
it does not express much, Frederick, 
even if it means much. I wish I could 
rouse you, my good F rederick ; you 
want to be roused.” 

“Yes, William, yes. No doubt,” 
returned the other, lifting his dim eyes 
to his face. “But I am not like you.” 

The Father of the Marshalsea said, 
with a shrug of modest self-deprecia- 
tion, “O, you might be like me, my 
dear Frederick ; you might be, if you 
chose ! ” and forbore, in the magna- 
nimity of his strength, to press his 
fallen brother further. 


There was a deal of leave-taking go- 
ing on in corners, as was usual on Sun- 
day nights ; and here and there in the 
dark, some poor woman, wife or moth- 
er, was weeping with a new collegian. 
The time had been when the Father him- 
self had wept, in the shades of that yard, 
as his own poor wife had wept. But it 
was many years ago ; and now he was 
like a passenger aboard ship in a long 
voyage, who has recovered from sea- 
sickness, and is impatient of that weak- 
ness in the fresher passengers taken 
aboard at the last port. He was in- 
clined to remonstrate, and to express 
his opinion that people who couldn’t 
get on without ^crying had no business 
there. In manner, if not in words, he 
always testified his displeasure at these 
interruptions of the general harmony : 
and it was so well understood, that de- 
linquents usually withdrew if they were 
aware of him. 

On this Sunday evening he accom- 
panied his brother to the gate with an 
air of endurance and clemency ; being 
in a bland temper and graciously dis- 
posed to overlook the tears. In the 
flaring; gaslight of the lodge, several 
collegians were basking : some taking 
leave of visitors, and some who had no 
visitors watching the frequent turning 
of the key, and conversing with one 
another and with Mr. Chivery. The 
paternal entrance made a sensation of 
course ; and Mr. Chivery, touching his 
hat (in a short manner, though) with his 
key, hoped he found himself tolerable. 

“ Thank you, Chivery, quite well. 
And you ? ” 

Mr. Chivery said, in a low growl, “ O, 
he was all right.” Which was his gen- 
eral way of acknowledging inquiries 
after his health when a little sullen. 

“ I had a visit from Young John to- 
day, Chivery. And very smart he 
looked, I assure you.” 

So Mr. Chivery had heard. Mr. 
Chivery must confess, how'ever, that 
his wish was that the boy did n’t lay out 
so much money upon it. For what did 
it bring him in? It only brought him 
in Wexation. And he could get that 
anywhere for nothing. 

“How vexation, Chivery?” asked 
the benignant father. 


9 


130 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


“No odds,” returned Mr. Chivery. 
“ Never mind. Mr. Frederick going 
out?” 

“ Yes, Chivery, my brother is going 
home to bed. He is tired, and not 
quite well. Take care, Frederick, take 
care. Good night, my dear F rederick ! ” 

Shaking hands with his brother, and 
touching his greasy hat to the company 
in the lodge, Frederick slowly shuffled 
out of the door which Mr. Chivery un- 
locked for him. The Father of the 
Marshalsea showed the- amiable solici- 
tude of a superior being that he should 
come to no harm. 

“ Be so kind as to keep the door open 
a moment, Chivery, that I may see him 
go along the passage and down the 
steps. Take care, Frederick ! (He is 
very infirm.) Mind the steps ! (He is 
so very absent.) Be careful how you 
cross, Frederick. (I really don’t like 
the notion of his going wandering at 
large, he is so extremely liable to be 
run over. ”) 

With these words, and with a face 
expressive of many uneasy doubts and 
much anxious guardianship, he turned 
his regards upon the assembled com- 
pany in the lodge, — so plainly indicat- 
ing that his brother was to be pitied 
for not being under lock and key, that 
an opinion to that effect went round 
among the collegians assembled. 

But he did not receive it with un- 
qualified assent ; on the contrary, he 
said, No, gentlemen, no ; let them not 
misunderstand him. His brother Fred- 
erick was much broken, no doubt, and 
it might be more comfortable to him- 
self (the Father of the Marshalsea) to 
know that he was safe within the walls. 
Still, it must be remembered that to 
support an existence there during many 
j^ears, required a certain combination of 
qualities, — he did not say high quali- 
ties, but qualities, — moral qualities. 
Now, had his brother Frederick that 
peculiar union of qualities ? Gentlemen, 
he was a most excellent man, a most 
gentle, tender, and estimable man, with 
the simplicity of a child ; but would he, 
though unsuited for most other places, 
do for that place? No; he said con- 
.fidently, no ! And, he said, Heaven 
forbid that Frederick should be there 


in any other character than in his pres- 
ent voluntary character ! Gentlemen, 
whoever came to that college, to re- 
main there a length of time, must have 
strength of character to go through a 
good deal and to come out of a good 
deal.. Was his beloved brother Fred- 
erick that man ? No. They saw him, 
even as it was, crushed. Misfortune 
crushed him. He had not power of 
recoil enough, not elasticity enough, to 
be a long time in such a place, and yet 
preserve his self-respect and feel con- 
scious that he was a gentleman. Fred- 
erick had not (if he might use the ex- 
pression) Power enough to see in any 
delicate little attentions and — and — 
Testimonials that he might under such 
circumstances receive, the goodness of 
human nature, the fine spirit animating 
the collegians as a community, and at 
the same time no degradation to him- 
self, and no depreciation of his claims 
as a gentleman. Gentlemen, God bless 
you ! 

Such was the homily with^W'hich he 
improved and pointed the occasion to 
the company in the lodge, before turn- 
ing into the sallow yard again, and go- 
ing with his own poor shabby dignity 
past the collegian in the dressing-gown 
who had no coat, and past the colle- 
gian in the seaside slippers who had 
no shoes, and past the stout greengro- 
cer collegian in the corduroy knee- 
breeches who had no cares, and past 
the lean clerk 'collegian in buttonless 
black who had no hopes, up his own 
poor shabby staircase, to his own poor 
shabby room. 

There the table Avas laid for his sup- 
per, and his old gray gown was ready 
for him on his chair-back at the fire. 
His daughter put her little prayer-book 
in her pocket, — had she been praying 
for pity on all prisoners and captives ! 
— and rose to welcome him. 

Uncle had gone home, then ? she 
asked him, as she changed his coat and 
gave him his black velvet cap. Yes, 
uncle had gone home. Had her father 
enjoyed his walk? Why, not much, 
Amy; not much. No? Did he not 
feel quite well? 

As she stood behind him, leaning over 
his chair so lovingly, he loolgsd with 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


downcast eyes at the fire. An uneasi- 
ness stole over him that was like a 
touch of shame ; and when he spoke, 
as he presently did, it was in an uncon- 
nected and embarrassed manner. 

“Something, I — hem! — I don’t know 
what, has gone wrong with Chivery. 
He is not — ha ! — not nearly so oblig- 
ing and attentive as usual to-night. It 

— hem ! — it ’s a little thing, but it puts 
me out, my love. It ’s impossible to 
forget,” turning his hands over and 
over, and looking closely at them, 
“that — hem! — that in such a life as 
mine, I am unfortunately dependent on 
these men for something every hour in 
the day.” 

Her arm was on his shoulder, but she 
did not look in his face while he spoke. 
Bending her head, she looked another 
way. 

“I — hem ! — I can’t think, Amy, 
what has given Chivery offence. He 
is generally so — so very attentive and 
respectful. And to-night he was quite 

— quite short with me. Other people 
there too ! Why, good Heaven ! if I 
was to lose the support and recognition 
of Chivery and. his brother officers, I 
might starve to death here.” 

While he spoke, he was opening and 
shutting his hands like valves ; so con- 
scious all the time of that touch of 
shame, that he shrunk before his own 
knowledge of his meaning. 

“I — ha ! — I can’t think what it ’s 
owing to. I am sure I cannot imagine 
what the cause of it is. There was a 
certain Jackson here once, a turnkey of 
the name of Jackson (I don’t think you 
can remember him, my dear, you were 
very young), and — hem ! — and he had 
a — brother, and this — young brother 
paid his addresses to — at least, did not 
go so far as to pay his addresses to — 
but admired — respectfully admired — 
the — not the daughter, the sister • — of 
one of us ; a rather distinguished colle- 
gian ; I may say, very much so. His 
name was Captain Martin ; and he con- 
sulted me on the question whether it 
was necessary that his daughter — sis- 
ter — should hazard offending the turn- 
key brother by being too — ha ! — too 
plain with the other brother. Captain 
Martin was a gentleman and a man of 


131 

honor, and I put it to him first to give 
me his — his own opinion. Captain 
Martin (highly respected in the army) 
then unhesitatingly said, that it ap- 
peared to him that his — hem ! — sister 
was not called upon to understand the 
young man too distinctly, and that she 
might lead him on — I am doubtful 
whether lead him on was Captain Mar- 
tin’s exact expression ; indeed I think 
he said tolerate him — on her father’s 
— I should say, brother’s — account. 
I liardly know how I have strayed into 
this story. I suppose it has been through 
being unable to account for Chivery ; 
but as to the connection between the 
two, I don’t see — ” 

His voice died away, as if she could 
not bear the pain of hearing him, and 
her hand had gradually crept to his lips. 
For a little while, there was a dead si- 
lence and stillness ; and he remained 
shrunk in his chair, and she remained 
with her arm round his neck, and her 
head bowed down upon his shoulder. 

His supper was cooking in a sauce- 
pan on the fire, and, when she moved, 
it was to make it ready for him on the 
table. He took his usual seat, she took 
hers, and he began his meal. They 
did not, as yet, look at one another. 
By little and little he began ; laying 
down his knife and fork with a noise, 
taking things up sharply, biting at his 
bread as if he were offended with it, 
and in other similar ways showing that 
he was out of sorts. At length he 
pushed his plate from him, and spoke 
aloud. With the strangest inconsist- 
ency. 

“ What does it matter whether I eat 
or starve ? What does it matter wheth- 
er such a blighted life as mine comes to 
an end now, next week, or next year? 
What am I worth to any one? A poor 
prisoner, fed on alms and broken vict- 
uals ; a squalid, disgraced wretch ! ” 

“Father, father!” As he rose, she 
went on her knees to him, and held up 
her hands to him. 

“ Amy,” he went on in a suppressed 
voice, trembling violently, and looking 
at her as wildly as if he had gone mad, 
“ I tell you, if you could see me as your 
mother saw me, you would n’t believe it 
to be the creature you have only looked 


132 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


at through the bars of this cage. I was 
young, I was accomplished, I was good- 
looking, I was independent — by God, 
I was, child ! — and people sought me 
out, and envied me. Envied me ! ” 

“ Dear father 1 ” She tried to take 
down the shaking arm that he flour- 
ished in the air, but he resisted, and 
put her hand away. 

“ If I had but a picture of myself in 
those days, though it was ever so ill done, 
you would be proud of it, you would be 
proud of it. But I have no such thing. 
Now, let me be a warning ! Let no 
man,” he cried, looking haggardly 
about, “ fail to preserve at least that, 
little of the times of his prosperity and 
respect. Let his children have that 
clew to what he was. Unless my face, 
when I am dead, subsides into the 
long-departed look, — they say such 
things happen, I don’t know, — my 
children will have never seen me.” 

“ Father, father ! ” 

“O, despise me, despise me! Look 
away from me, don’t listen to me, stop 
me, blush for me, cry for me. Even 
you, Amy ! Do it, do it ! I do it to 
myself ! I am hardened now, I have 
sunk too low to care long even for 
that.” 

“ Dear father, loved father, darling of 
my heart ! ” She was clinging to him 
with her arms, and she got him to drop 
into his chair again, and caught at the 
raised arm, and tried to put it round 
her neck. 

“ Let it lie there, father. Look at me, 
father, kiss me, father ! Only think of 
me, father, for one little moment ! ” 

Still he went on in the same wild way, 
though it was gradually breaking down 
into a miserable whining. 

“ And yet I have some respect here. 

I have made some stand against it. I 
am not quite trodden down. Go out 
and ask who is the chief person in the 
place. They’ll tell you it’s your fa- 
ther. Go out and ask who is never tri- 
fled with, and who is always treated with 
some delicacy. They ’ll say, your fa- 
ther. Go out and ask what funeral here 
(it must be here, I know it can be no- 
where else) will make more talk, and 
perhaps more grief, than any that has 
ever gone out at the gate. They ’ll say 


your father’s. Well, then. Amy! Amy! 
Is your father so universally despised? 
Is there nothing to redeem him? Will 
you have nothing to remember him by, 
but his ruin and decay? Will you be 
able to have no affection for him when 
he is gone, poor castaway, gone?” 

He burst into tears of maudlin pity 
for himself, and at length suffering her 
to embrace him, and take charge of him, 
let his gray head rest against her cheek, 
and bewailed his wretchedness. Pres- 
ently he changed the subject of his 
lamentations, and, clasping his hands 
about her as she embraced him, cried, 
O Amy, his motherless, forlorn child ! 
O the days that he had seen her care- 
ful and laborious for him ! Then he 
reverted to himself, and weakly told 
her how much better she would have 
loved him, if she had known him in 
his vanished character, and how he 
would have married her to a gentleman 
who should have been proud of her as 
his daughter, and how (at which he 
cried again) she should first have rid- 
den at his fatherly side on her own 
horse, and how the crowd (by which 
he meant in effect the people who had 
given him the twelve shillings he then 
had in his pocket) should have trudged 
the dusty roads respectfully. 

Thus, now boasting, now despairing, 
in either fit a captive w'ith the jail-rot 
upon him, and the impurity of his prison 
worn into the grain of his soul, he re- 
vealed his degenerate state to his affec- 
tionate child. No one else ever beheld 
him in the details of his humiliation. 
Little recked the collegians who vrere 
laughing in their rooms over his late 
address in the lodge, what a serious 
picture they had in their obscure gal- 
lery of the Marshalsea that Sunday 
night. 

There was a classical daughter once 
— perhaps — who ministered to her fa- 
ther in his prison as her mother had 
ministered to her. Little Dorrit, though 
of the unheroic modern stock, and mere 
English, did much more, in comforting 
her father’s wasted heart upon her inno- 
cent breast, and turning to it a fountain 
of love and fidelity that never ran dry or 
waned, through all his years of famine. 

She soothed him ; asked him for his 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


i33 


forgiveness if she had been, or seemed 
to have been, undutiful ; told him, 
Heaven knows truly, that she could 
not honor him more if he were the fa- 
vorite of Fortune and the whole world 
acknowledged him. When his tears 
were dried, and he sobbed in his weak- 
ness no longer, and was free from that 
touch of shame, and had recovered his 
usual bearing, she prepared the remains 
of his supper afresh, and, sitting by his 
side, rejoiced to see him eat and drink. 
For now he sat in his black velvet cap 
and old gray gown magnanimous again ; 
and would have comported himself, 
towards any collegian who might have 
looked in to ask his advice, like a great 
moral Lord Chesterfield, or Master of 
the ethical ceremonies of the Marshal- 
sea. 

To keep his attention engaged, she 
talked with him about his wardrobe; 
when he was pleased to say that, yes, 
indeed, those shirts she proposed would 
be exceedingly acceptable, for those he 
had were worn out, and, being ready- 
made, had never fitted him. Being con- 
versational and in a reasonable flow of 
spirits, he then invited her attention to 
his coat as it hung behind the door; re- 
marking that the Father of the place 
would set an indifferent example to his 
children, already disposed to be sloven- 
ly, if he went among them out at el- 
bows. He was jocular, too, as to the 
heeling of his shoes ; but became grave 
on the subject of his cravat, and prom- 
ised her that w'hen she could afford it, 
she should buy him a new one. 

While he smoked out his cigar in 
peace, she made his bed, and put the 
small room in order for his repose. Be- 
ing weary then, owing to the advanced 
hour and his emotions, he came out of 
his chair to bless her and wish her 
good night. All this time he had never 
once thought of her dress, her shoes, 
her need of anything. No other per- 
son upon earth, save herself, could have 
been so unmindful of her wants. 

He kissed her many times with 
“ Bless you, my love. Good night, my 
dear ! ” 

But her gentle breast had been so 
deeply wounded by what she had seen 
of him, that she was unwilling to leave 


him alone, lest he should lament and 
despair again. “ Father, dear, I am not 
tired ; let me come back presently, 
when you are in bed, and sit by you.” 

He asked her, with an air of protec- 
tion, if she felt solitary. 

“ Yes, father.” 

“ Then come back by all means, my 
love.” 

“ I shall be very quiet, father. ” 

“Don’t think of me, my dear,” he 
said, giving her his kind permission ful- 
ly. “ Come back by all means.” 

He seemed to be dozing when she 
returned, and she put the low fire to- 

ether very softly lest she should awake 

im. But he overheard her, and called 
out who was that ? 

“Only Amy, father.” 

“ Amy, my child, come here. I want 
to say a word to you.” 

He raised himself a little in his low 
bed, as she kneeled beside it to bring 
her face near him ; and put his hand 
between hers. Oh ! Both the private 
father, and the father of the Marshalsea 
were strong within him then. 

“ My love, you have had a life of 
hardship here. No companions, no rec- 
reations, many cares, I am afraid ? ” 

“ Don’t think of that, dear. I never 
do.” 

“ You know my position, Amy. I 
have not been able to do much for you ; 
but all I have been able to do, I have 
done.” 

“ Yes, my dear father,” she rejoined, 
kissing him. “I know, I know.” 

“ I am in the twenty-third year of my 
life here,” he said, with a catch in his 
breath that was not so much a sob as 
an irrepressible sound of self-approval, 
the momentary outburst of a noble con- 
sciousness. “ It is all I could do for 
my children, — I have done it. Amy, 
my love, you are by far the best loved of 
the three ; I have had you principally 
in my mind, — whatever I have done 
for your sake, my dear child, I have 
done freely and without murmuring.” 

Only the Wisdom that holds the clew 
to all hearts and all mysteries can sure- 
ly know to what extent a man, especial- 
ly a man brought down as this man had 
been, can impose upon himself. Enough 
for the present place that he lay down 


134 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


with wet eyelashes, serene, in a manner 
majestic, after bestowing his life of deg- 
radation as a sort of portion on the de- 
voted child upon whom its miseries had 
fallen so heavily, and whose love alone 
had saved him to be even what he was. 

That child had no doubts, asked her- 
self no questions, for she was but too 
content to see him with a lustre round 
his head. Poor dear, good dear, truest, 
kindest, dearest, were the only words 
she had for him, as she hushed him to 
rest. 

She never left him all that night. As 
if she had done him a wrong which her 
tenderness could hardly repair, she sat 
by him in his sleep, at times softly kiss- 
ing him with suspended breath, and 
calling him in a whisker by some en- 
dearing name. At times she stood 
aside, so as not to intercept the low 
firelight, and, watching him when it 
fell upon his sleeping face, wondered 
did he look now at all as he had looked 
when he was prosperous and happy : as 
he had so touched her by imagining 
that he might look once more in that 
awful time. At the thought of that 
time, she kneeled beside his bed again, 
and prayed, “ O spare his life ! O save 
him to me ! O look down upon my 
dear, long-suffering, unfortunate, much- 
changed, dear, dear father ! ” 

Not until the morning came to pro- 
tect him and encourage him, did she 
give him a last kiss and leave the small 
room. When she had stolen down 
stairs, and along the empty yard, and 
had crept up to her own high garret, 
the smokeless housetops and the dis- 
tant country hills were discernible over 
the wall in the clear morning. As she 
gently opened, the window, and looked 
eastward down the prison yard, the 
spikes upon the wall were tipped with 
red, then made a sullen purple pattern 
on the sun as it came flaming up into 
the heavens. The spikes had never 
looked so sharp and cruel, nor the bars 
so heavy, nor the prison space so 
gloomy and contracted. She thought 
of the sunrise on rolling rivers, of the 
sunrise on wide seas, of the sunrise on 
rich landscapes, of the sunrise on great 
forests where the birds were waking 
and the trees were rustling ; and she 


looked into the living grave on which 
the sun had risen, with her father in 
it, three-and-twenty years, and said, 
in a burst of sorrow and compassion, 
“No, no, I have never seen him in my 
life ! ” 


CHAPTER XX. 

MOVING IN SOCIETY. 

If Young John Chivery had had the 
inclination, and the power, to write a 
satire on family pride, he would have 
had no need to go for an avenging 
illustration out of the family of his 
beloved. He would have found it 
amply in that gallant brother and that 
dainty sister, so steeped in mean expe- 
riences, and so loftily conscious of the 
family name ; so ready to beg or bor- 
row from the poorest, to eat of any- 
body’s bread, spend anybody’s money, 
drink from anybody’s cup and break 
it afterwards. To have painted the 
sordid facts of their lives, and they 
throughout invoking the death’s head 
apparition of the family gentility to 
come and scare their benefactors, 
would have made Young John a satirist 
of the first water. 

Tip had turned his liberty to hopeful 
account by becoming a billiard-marker. 
He had troubled himself so little as to 
the means of his release, that Clennam 
scarcely needed to have been at the 
pains of impressing the mind of Mr. 
Plornish on that subject. Whoever 
had paid him the compliment, he very 
readily accepted the compliment with 
his compliments, and there was an end 
of it. Issuing forth from the gate on 
these easy terms, he became a billiard- 
marker ; and now occasionally looked 
in at the little skittle-ground in a green 
Newmarket coat (second-hand), with a 
shining collar and bright buttons (new), 
and drank the beer of the collegians. 

One solid stationary point in the 
looseness of this gentleman’s character 
was, that he respected and admired his 
sister Amy. The feeling had never 
induced him to spare her a moment’s 
uneasiness, or to put himself to any 
restraint or inconvenience on her ac- 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


i35 


count ; but, with that Marshalsea taint 
upon his love, he loved her. The same 
rank Marshalsea flavor was to be 
recognized in his distinctly perceiving 
that she sacrificed her life to her father, 
and in his having no idea that she had 
done anything for himself. 

When this spirited young man and 
his sister had begun systematically to 
produce the family skeleton for the 
overawing of the college, this narrative 
cannot precisely state. Probably at 
about the period when they began to 
dine on the college charity. It is cer- 
tain that the more reduced and necessi- 
tous they were, the more pompously the 
skeleton emerged from its tomb ; and 
that when there was anything particu- 
larly shabby in the wind, the skeleton 
always came out with the ghastliest 
flourish. 

Little Dorrit was late on the Monday 
morning, for her father slept late, and 
afterwards there was his breakfast to 
prepare and his room to arrange. She 
had no engagement to go out to work, 
however, and therefore stayed with him 
until, with Maggy’s help, she had put 
everything right about him, and had 
seen him off upon his morning walk (of 
twenty yards or so) to the coffee-house 
to read the paper. She then got on 
her bonnet and went out : having been 
anxious to get out much sooner. There 
was, as usual, a cessation of the Small- 
talk in the lodge as she passed through 
it ; and a collegian who had come in on 
Saturday night received the intimation 
from the elbow' of a more seasoned 
collegian, “ Look out. Here she is ! ” 

She wanted to see her sister, but 
v'hen she got round to Mr. Cripples’s 
she found that both her sister and her 
uncle had gone to the theatre where 
they were engaged. Having taken 
thought of this probability by the way, 
and having settled that in such case she 
would follow them, she set off afresh for 
the theatre, which was on that side of 
the river, andmot very far away. 

Little Dorrit was almost as ignorant 
of the w'ays of theatres as of the ways of 
gold-mines, and when she w'as directed 
to a furtive sort of door, with a curious 
up-all-night air about it, that appeared 
to be ashamed of itself and to be hiding 


in an alley, she hesitated to approach 
it ; being further deterred by the sight 
of some half-dozen close-shaved gentle- 
men, with their hats very strangely on, 
who were lounging about the door, 
looking not at all unlike collegians. On 
her applying to them, reassured by this 
resemblance, for a direction to Miss 
Dorrit, they made way for her to enter 
a dark hall — it was more like a great 
grim lamp gone out than anything else 
— where she could hear the distant 
playing of music and the sound of 
dancing feet. A man so much in w'ant 
of airing that he had a blue mould upon 
him sat watching this dark place from 
a hole iii a corner, like a spider ; and he 
told her that he would send a message 
up to Miss Dorrit by the first lady or 
gentleman who w'ent through. The 
first lady who went through had a roll 
of music, half in her muff and half out 
of it, and was in such a tumbled con- 
dition altogether, that it seemed as if it 
would be an act of kindness to iron 
her. But as she was very good-natured, 
and said, “ Come with me ; I ’ll soon 
find Miss Dorrit for you,” Miss Dor- 
rit’s sister went with her, drawing near- 
er and nearer, at every step she took in 
the darkness, to the sound of music and 
the sound of dancing feet. 

At last they came into a maze of 
dust, where a quantity of people were 
tumbling over one another, and where 
there was such a confusion of unac- 
countable shapes of beams, bulkheads, 
brick walls, ropes, and rollers, and such 
a mixing of gaslight and daylight, that 
they seemed to have got on the wrong 
side of the pattern of the universe. 
Little Dorrit, left to herself, and knocked 
against by somebody every moment, was 
quite bewildered when she heard her 
sister’s voice. 

“ Why, good gracious, Amy, what 
ever brought you here ! ” 

“ I wanted to see you, Fanny, dear ; 
and as I am going out all day to-mor- 
row, and knew you might be engaged 
all day to-day, I thought — ” 

“ But the idea, Amy, of yott coming 
behind ! I never did ! ” As her sis- 
ter said this in no very cordial tone of 
welcome, she conducted her to a more 
open part of the maze, where various 


136 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


golden chairs and tables were heaped 
together, and where a number of young 
ladies were sitting on anything they 
could find, chattering. All these young 
ladies wanted ironing, and all had a 
curious way of looking everywhere, 
while they chattered. 

Just as the sisters arrived here, a 
monotonous boy in a Scotch cap put 
his head round a beam on the left, and 
said, “ Less noise there, ladies !” and 
disappeared. Immediately after which, 
a sprightly gentleman with a quantity 
of long black hair looked round a beam 
on the right, and said, “ Less noise 
there, darlings ! ” and also disappeared. 

“ The notion of you among profes- 
sionals, Amy, is really the last thing I 
could have conceived ! ” said her sister. 
“ Why, how did you ever get here ? ” 

“ I don’t know. The lady who told 
you I was here was so good as to bring 
me in.” 

“ Like you quiet little things ! You 
can make your way anywhere, I believe. 
/ could n’t have managed it, Amy, 
though I know so much more of the 
world.” 

It was the family custom to lay it 
down as family law, that she was a 
plain domestic little creature, without 
the great and sage experiences of the 
rest. This family fiction was the family 
assertion of itself against her services. 
Not to make too much of them. 

“ Well ! And what have you got on 
your mind, Amy? Of course you have 
got something on your mind, about 
me?” said Fanny. She spoke as if 
her sister, between two and three years 
her junior, were her prejudiced grand- 
mother. 

“ It is not much ; but since you told 
me of the lady who gave you the brace- 
let, Fanny — ” 

The monotonous boy put his head 
round the beam on the left, and said, 
“ Look out there, ladies ! ” and disap- 
peared. The sprightly gentleman with 
the black hair as suddenly put his head 
round the beam on the right, and said, 
“ Look out there, darlings ! ” and also 
disappeared. Thereupon all the young 
ladies rose, and began shaking their 
skirts out behind. 

“Well, Amy?” said Fanny, doing 


as the rest did ; “what were you going 
to say ? ” 

“ Since you told me a lady had given 
you the bracelet you showed me, Fan- 
ny, I have not been quite easy on your 
account, and indeed want to know a 
little more, if you will confide more to 
me.” 

“ Now, ladies ! ” said the boy in the 
Scotch cap. “Now, darlings!” said 
the gentleman with the black hair. 
They were every one gone in a moment, 
and the music and the dancing feet were 
heard again. 

Little Dorrit sat down in a golden 
chair, made quite giddy by these rapid 
interruptions. Her sister and the rest 
were a long time gone ; and during 
their absence a voice (it appeared to be 
that of the gentleman with the black 
hair) was continually calling out through 
the music, “ One, two, three, four, five, 
six, — go ! One, two, three, four, five, 
six, — go ! Steady, darlings ! One, 
two, three, four, five, six, — go ! ” Ul- 
timately the voice stopped, and they all 
came back again, more or less out of 
breath, folding themselves in their 
shawls, and making ready for the streets. 
“ Stop a moment, Amy, and let them 
get away before us,” whispered Fanny. 
They were soon left alone ; nothing 
more important happening, in the 
mean time, than the boy looking round 
his old beam, and saying, “ Everybody 
at eleven to morrow, ladies ! ” and the 
gentleman with the black hair looking 
round his old beam, and saying, “ Ev- 
erybody at eleven to-morrow, darlings ! ” 
each in his own accustomed manner. 

When they were alone, something 
was rolled up or by other means got out 
of the way, and there was a great emp- 
ty well before them, looking down into 
the depths of which Fanny said, “ Now, 
uncle ! ” Little Dorrit, as her eyes be- 
came used to the darkness, faintly made 
him out, at the bottom of the well, in 
an obscure comer by himself, with his 
instrument in its ragged case under his 
arm. 

The old man looked as if the remote 
high gallery windows, with their little 
strip of sky, might have been the point 
of his better fortunes, from which he 
had descended, until he had gradually 










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\ 






















































































. 




























* 












’ < V 
















































. 


» 







LITTLE DORRIT. 


137 


sunk down below there to the bottom. 
He had been in that place six nights a 
week for many years, but had never 
been observed to raise his eyes above 
his music-book, and was confidently 
believed to have never seen a play. 
There were legends in the place that he 
did not so much as know the popular 
heroes and heroines by sight, and that 
the low comedian had “ mugged ” at 
him in his richest manner fifty nights 
for a wager, and he had shown no trace 
of consciousness. The carpeuters had 
a joke to the effect that he was dead 
without being aware of it ; and the fre- 
quenters of the pit supposed him to 
pass his whole life, night and day and 
Sunday and all, in the orchestra. They 
had tried him a few times with pinches 
of snuff offered over the rails, and he 
had always responded to this attention 
with a momentary waking up of man- 
ner that had the pale phantom of a gen- 
tleman in it : beyond this he never, on 
any occasion, had any other part in 
what was going on than the part written 
out for the clarionet ; in private life, 
where there was no part for the clario- 
net, he had no part at all. Some said 
he was poor, some said he was a 
wealthy miser ; but he said nothing, 
never lifted up his bowed head, never 
varied his shuffling gait by getting 
his springless foot from the ground. 
Though expecting now to be summoned 
by his niece, he did not hear her until 
she had spoken to him three or four 
times; nor was he at all surprised by 
the presence of two nieces instead of 
one, but merely said, in his tremulous 
voice, “ I am coming, I am coming ! ” 
and crept forth by some underground 
way which emitted a cellarous smell. 

“ And so, Amy,” said her sister, when 
the three together passed out, at the 
door that had such a shame-faced con- 
sciousness of being different from other 
doors, — the uncle instinctively taking 
Amy’s arm as the arm to be relied 
on, — “ so, Amy, you are curious about 
me?” 

She was pretty, and conscious, and 
rather flaunting ; and the condescension 
with which she put aside the superior- 
ity of her charms, and of her worldly 
experience, and addressed her sister on 


almost equal terms, had a vast deal of 
the family in it. 

“I am interested, Fanny, and con- 
cerned in anything that concerns you.” 

“ So you are, so you are, and you are 
the best of Amys. If I am ever a little 
provoking, I am sure you ’ll consider 
what a thing it is to occupy my position 
and feel a consciousness of being supe- 
rior to it. I shouldn’t care,” said the 
Daughter of the Father of the Marshal- 
sea, ‘‘if the others were not so common. 
None of them have come down in the 
world as we have. They are all on 
their own level. Common.” 

Little Dorrit mildly looked at the 
speaker, but did not interrupt her. 
Fanny took out her handkerchief, and 
rather angrily wiped her eyes. “ I was 
not born where you were, you know, 
Amy, and perhaps that makes a differ- 
ence. My dear child, when we get rid 
of uncle, you shall know all about it. 
We’ll drop him at the cook’s shop 
where he is going to dine.” 

They walked on with him until they 
came to a dirty shop window in a dirty 
street, which was made almost opaque 
by the steam of hot meats, vegetables, 
and puddings. But glimpses were to 
be caught of a roast leg of pork, burst- 
ing into tears of sage and onion in a 
metal reservoir full of gravy, of an unc- 
tuous piece of roast beef and blisterous 
Yorkshire pudding bubbling hot in a 
similar receptacle, of a stuffed fillet of 
veal in rapid cut, of a ham in a perspi- 
ration with the pace it was going at, of 
a shallow tank of baked potatoes glued 
together by their own richness, of a 
truss or two of boiled greens, and other 
substantial delicacies. Within were a 
few wooden partitions, behind which 
such customers as found it more con- 
venient to take away their dinners in 
their stomachs than in their hands 
packed their purchases in solitude. 
Fanny, opening her reticule as they 
surveyed these things, produced from 
that repository a shilling and handed 
it to Uncle. Uncle, after not looking 
at it a little while, divined its object, 
and muttering, “Dinner? Ha! Yes, 
yes, yes ! ” slowly vanished from them 
into the mist. 

“ Now, Amy,” said her sister, “come 


138 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


with me, if you are not too tired to walk 
to Harley Street, Cavendish Square.” 

The air with which she threw off this 
distinguished address, and the toss she 
gave her new bonnet (which was more 
gauzy than serviceable), made her sister 
wonder ; however, she expressed her 
readiness to go to Harley Street, and 
thither they directed their steps. Ar- 
rived at that grand destination, Fanny 
singled out the handsomest house, and, 
knocking at the door, inquired for Mrs. 
Merdle. The footman who opened the 
door, although he had powder on his 
head, and was backed up by two other 
footmen likewise powdered, not only 
admitted Mrs. Merdle to be at home, 
but asked Fanny to walk in. Fanny 
walked in, taking her sister with her ; 
and they went up stairs with powder 
going before and powder stopping be- 
hind, and were left in a spacious semi- 
circular drawing-room, one of sev- 
eral drawing-rooms, where there was a 
parrot on the outside of a golden cage 
holding on by its beak with its scaly 
legs in the air, and putting itself into 
many strange upside-down postures. 
This peculiarity has been observed in 
birds of quite another feather, climbing 
upon golden wires. 

The room was far more splendid than 
anything Little Dorrit had ever im- 
agined, and would have been splendid 
and costly in any eyes. She looked in 
amazement at her sister, and would have 
asked a question, but that Fanny, with 
a warning frown, pointed to a curtained 
doorway of communication with another 
room. The curtain shook next mo- 
ment, and a lady, raising it with a heav- 
ily ringed hand, dropped it behind her 
again as she entered. 

The lady was not young and fresh 
from the hand of Nature, but was young 
and fresh from the hand of her maid. 
She had large, unfeeling, nandsome eyes, 
and dark, unfeeling, handsome hair, and 
abroad, unfeeling, handsome bosom, and 
was made the most of in every particu- 
lar. Either because she had a cold, or 
because it suited her face, she wore a 
rich white fillet tied over her head and 
under her chin. And if ever there were 
an unfeeling, handsome chin that looked 
as if, for certain, it had never been, in 


familiar parlance, “ chucked ” by the 
hand of man, it was the chin curbed up 
so tight and close by that laced bridle. 

“Mrs. Merdle,” said Fanny. “My 
sister, ma’am.” 

“ I am glad to see your sister, Miss 
Dorrit. I did not remember that you 
had a sister.” 

“ I did not mention that I had,” said 
Fanny. 

“ Ay ! ” Mrs. Merdle curved the 
little finger of her left hand as who 
should say, “ I have caught you. I 
know you did n’t ! ” All her action 
was usually with her left hand because 
her hands were not a pair ; the left be- 
ing much the whiter and plumper of the 
two. Then she added, “ Sit down,” 
and composed herself voluptuously in 
a nest of crimson and gold cushions, on 
an ottomau near the parrot. 

“ Also professional ? ” said Mrs. Mer- 
dle, looking at Little Dorrit through an 
eye-glass. 

Fanny answered, No. “No,” said 
Mrs. Merdle, dropping her glass. “ Has 
not a professional air. Very pleasant ; 
but not professional.” 

“ My sister, ma’am,” said Fanny, in 
whom there was a singular mixture of 
deference and hardihood, “ has been 
asking me to tell her, as between sis- 
ters, how I came to have the honor of 
knowing you. And as I had engaged to 
call upon you once more, I thought I 
might take the liberty of bringing her 
with me, when perhaps you would tell 
her. I wish her to know, and perhaps 
you will tell her.” 

“Do you think, at your sister’s age — ” 
hinted Mrs. Merdle. 

“ She is much older than she looks,” 
said Fanny; “almost as old as I 
am.” 

“ Society,” said Mrs. Merdle, with 
another curve of her little finger, “is so 
difficult to explain to young persons (in- 
deed is so difficult to explain to most 
persons), that I am glad to hear that. I 
wish Society was not so arbitrary, I wish 
it was not so exacting — Bird, be qui- 
et ! ” 

The parrot had given a most piercing 
shriek, as if its name were Society and 
it asserted its right to its exactions. 

“But,” resumed Mrs. Merdle, “we 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


i39 


must take it as we find it. We know it 
is hollow and conventional and worldly 
and very shocking, but unless we are 
Savages in the Tropical seas (I should 
have been charmed to be one myself, ■ — 
most delightful life and perfect climate 
I am told), we must consult it. It is the 
common lot. Mr. Merdle is a most ex- 
tensive merchant, his transactions are 
on the vastest scale, his wealth and in- 
fluence are very great, but even he — 
Bird, be quiet ! ” 

The parrot had shrieked another 
shriek ; and it filled up the sentence so 
expressively that Mrs. Merdle was un- 
der no necessity to. end it. 

“ Since your sister begs that I would 
terminate our personal acquaintance,” 
she began again, addressing Little Dor- 
rit, “ by relating the circumstances that 
are much to her credit, I cannot object 
to comply with her request, I am sure. I 
have a son (I was first married extreme- 
ly young) of two or three and twenty.” 

Fanny set her lips, and her eyes 
looked half triumphantly at her sis- 
ter. 

“ A son of two or three and twenty. 
He is a little gay, a thing Society is ac- 
customed to in young men, and he is 
very impressible. Perhaps he inherits 
that misfortune. I am very impressible 
myself by nature. The weakest of 
creatures. My feelings are touched in 
a moment.” 

She said all this, and everything else, 
as coldly as a woman of snow ; quite 
forgetting the sisters except at odd times, 
and apparently addressing some abstrac- 
tion of Society. For whose behoof, 
too, she occasionally arranged her dress, 
or the composition of her figure upon 
the ottoman. 

“ So he is very impressible. Not a 
misfortune in our natural state, I dare 
say, but we are not in a natural state. 
Much to be lamented, no doubt, partic- 
ularly by myself, who am a child of na- 
ture if I could but show it ; but so it is. 
Society suppresses us and dominates 
us — Bird, be quiet ! ” 

The parrot had broken into a violent 
fit of laughter, after twisting divers bars 
of his cage with his crooked bill, and 
licking them with his black tongue. 

“ It is quite unnecessary to say to a 


person of your good sense, wide range 
of experience, and cultivated feelings,” 
said Mrs. Merdle, from her nest of 
crimson and gold — and there put up 
her glass to refresh her memory as to 
whom she was addressing, — “that the 
stage sometimes has a fascination for 
young men of that class of character. 
In saying the stage, I mean the people 
on it of the female sex. Therefore, 
when I heard that my son was supposed 
to be fascinated by a dancer, I knew 
what that usually meant in Society, and 
confided in her being a dancer at the 
Opera, where young men moving in So- 
ciety are usually fascinated.” 

She passed her white hands over one 
another, observant of the sisters now ; 
and the rings upon her fingers grated 
against each other, with a hard sound. 

“ As your sister will tell you, when I 
found what the theatre w'as, I was much 
surprised and much distressed. But 
when I found that your sister, by re- 
jecting my son’s advances (I must add, 
in an unexpected manner), had brought 
himio the point of proposing marriage, 
my feelings were of the profoundest 
anguish — acute.” 

She traced the outline of her left eye- 
brow', and put it right. 

“ In a distracted condition which only 
a mother — moving in Society — can be 
susceptible of, I determined to go my- 
self to the theatre, and represent my 
state of mind to the dancer. I made 
myself known to your sister. I found 
her, to my surprise, in many respects 
different from my expectations ; and 
certainly in none more so than in meet- 
ing me with — what shall I say? — a 
sort of family assertion on her own part?” 
Mrs. Merdle smiled. 

“ I told you, ma’am,” said Fanny, 
with a heightening color, “ that, al- 
though you found me in that situation, 
I was so far above the rest, that I con- 
sidered my family as good as your son’s ; 
and that I had a brother who, knowing 
the circumstances, would be of the same 
opinion, and would not consider such a 
connection any honor.” 

“ Miss Dorrit,” said Mrs. Merdle, 
after frostily looking at her through her 
glass, “precisely what I was on the 
point of telling your sister, in pursuance 


140 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


of your request. Much obliged to you 
for recalling it so accurately and antici- 
pating me. I immediately,” addressing 
Little Dorrit, “(for I am the creature 
of impulse), took a bracelet from my 
arm, and begged your sister to let me 
clasp it on hers, in token of the delight 
I had in our being able to approach the 
subject so far on a common footing.” 
(This was perfectly true, the lady hav- 
ing bought a cheap and showy article 
on her way to the interview, with a 
general eye to bribery.) 

“ And I told you, Mrs. Merdle,” 
said Fanny, “that we might be un- 
fortunate, but were not Common.” 

“ I think, the very words, Miss Dor- 
rit,” assented Mrs. Merdle. 

“ And I told you, Mrs. Merdle,” 
said Fanny, “that if you spoke to me 
of the superiority of your son’s standing 
in Society, it was barely possible that 
you rather deceived yourself in your 
suppositions about my origin ; and that 
my father’s standing, even in the Soci- 
ety in which he now moved (what that 
was, was best known to myself), was 
eminently superior, and was acknowl- 
edged by every one.” 

“ Quite accurate,” rejoined Mrs. Mer- 
dle. “ A most admirable memory.” 

“ Thank you, ma’am. Perhaps you 
will be so kind as to tell my sister the 
rest.” 

“There is very little to tell,” said 
Mrs. Merdle, reviewing the breadth of 
bosom which seemed essential to her 
having room enough to be unfeeling in, 
“ but it is to your sister’s credit. I 
pointed out to your sister the plain 
state of the case ; the impossibility of 
the Society in which we moved recog- 
nizing the Society in which she moved, 
— though charming, I have no doubt ; 
the immense disadvantage at which she 
would consequently place the family 
she had so high an opinion of, upon 
which we should find ourselves com- 
pelled to look down with contempt, and 
from which (socially speaking) we should 
feel obliged to recoil with abhorrence. 
In short, I made an appeal to that laud- 
able pride in your sister.” 

“ Let my sister know, if you please, 
Mrs. Merdle,” Fanny pouted, with a 
toss of her gauzy bonnet, “ that I had 


already had the honor of telling your 
son that I wished to have nothing what- 
ever to say to him.” 

“ Well, Miss Dorrit,” assented Mrs. 
Merdle, “ perhaps I might have men- 
tioned that before. If I did not think 
of it, perhaps it was because my mind 
reverted to the apprehensions I had at 
the time that he might persevere and 
ou might have something to say to 
im. I also mentioned to your sister — 
I again address the non-professional 
Miss Dorrit — that my son would have 
nothing in the event of such a marriage, 
and would be an absolute beggar. (I 
mention that, merely as a fact which is 
part of the narrative, and not as sup- 
posing it t > have influenced your sister, 
except in the prudent and legitimate 
way in which, constituted as our artifi- 
cial system is, we must all be influenced 
by such considerations.) Finally, after 
some high words and high spirit on the 
part of your sister, we came to the 
complete understanding that there was 
no danger ; and your sister was so 
obliging as to allow me to present her 
with a mark or two of my appreciation 
at my dress-maker’s.” 

Little Dorrit looked sorry, and glanced 
at Fanny with a troubled face. 

“Also,” said Mrs. Merdle, “as to 
promise to give me the present pleasure 
of a closing interview, and of parting 
with her on the best of terms. On 
which occasion,” added Mrs. Merdle, 
quitting her nest, and putting some- 
thing in Fanny’s hand, “ Miss Dorrit 
will permit me to say Farewell, with best 
wishes, in my own dull manner.” 

The sisters rose at the same time, 
and they all stood near the cage of the 
parrot, as he tore at a clawful of biscuit 
and spat it out, seemed to mock them 
with a pompous dance of his body with- 
out moving his feet, and suddenly 
turned himself upside down, and trailed 
himself all over the outside of his gold- 
en cage, with the aid of his cruel beak 
and his black tongue. 

“ Adieu, Miss Dorrit, with best wish- 
es,” said Mrs. Merdle. “ If we could 
only come to a Millennium, or some- 
thing of that sort, I for one might 
have the pleasure of knowing a number 
of charming and talented persons from 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


141 


whom I am at present excluded. A 
more primitive state of society would 
be delicious to me. There used to be 
a poem when I learnt lessons, some- 
thing about Lo the poor Indian whose 
something mind ! If a few thousand 
persons moving in Society could only 
go and be Indians, I would put my 
name down directly ; but as, moving 
in Society, we can’t be Indians unfor- 
tunately — Good morning ! ” 

They came down stairs with powder 
before them and powder behind, the 
elder sister haughty and the younger 
sister humbled, and were shut out into 
unpowdered Harley Street, Cavendish 
Square. 

“Well?” said Fanny, when they 
had gone a little way without speaking. 
“ Have you nothing to say, Amy ? ” 
“O, I don’t know what to say!” 
she answered, distressed. “ You did n’t 
like this young man, Fanny? ” 

“Like him? He is almost an idiot.” 
“ I am so sorry, — don’t be hurt, — 
but, since you ask me what I have to 
say, I am so very sorry, Fanny, that 
you suffered this lady to give you any- 
thing.” 

“You little Fool!” returned her 
sister, shaking her with the sharp pull 
she gave her arm. “ Have you no spir- 
it at all ? But that ’s just the way ! 
You have no self-respect, you have no 
becoming pride. Just as you allow 
yourself to be followed about by a con- 
temptible little Chivery of a thing,” 
with the scornfullest emphasis, “you 
would let your family be trodden on, 
and never turn.” 

“ Don’t say that, dear Fanny. I do 
what I can for them.” 

“You do what you can for them ! ” 
repeated Fanny, walking her on very 
fast. “ Would you let a woman like 
this, whom you could see, if you had 
any experience of anything, to be as 
false and insolent as a woman can be, 
— would you let her put her foot upon 
your family, and thank her for it ? ” 

“ No, Fanny, I am sure.” 

“ Then make her pay for it, you mean 
little thing. What else can you make 
her do? Make her pay for it, you 
stupid child ; and do your family some 
credit with the money ! ” 


They spoke no more, all the way back 
to the lodging where Fanny and her 
uncle lived. When they arrived there, 
they found the old man practising his 
clarionet in the dolefullest manner in 
a corner of the room. Fanny had a 
composite meal to make, of chops, and 
porter, and tea ; and indignantly pre- 
tended to prepare it for herself, though 
her sister did all that in quiet reality. 
When, at last, Fanny sat down to eat 
and drink, she threw the table imple- 
ments about, and was angry with her 
bread, much as her father had been last 
night. 

“If you despise me,” she said, burst- 
ing into vehement tears, “ because I 
am a dancer, why did you put me in the 
way of being one ? It was your doing. 
You would have me stoop as low as the 
ground before this Mrs. Merdle, and 
let her say what she liked and do what 
she liked, and hold us all in contempt, 
and tell me so to my face. Because I 
am a dancer ! ” 

“O Fanny!” 

“And Tip too, poor fellow. She is 
to disparage him just as much as she 
likes, without any check, — I suppose 
because he has been in the law, and 
the docks, and different things. Why, 
it was your doing, Amy. You might 
at least approve of his being defend- 
ed.” 

All this time the uncle was dolefully 
blowing his clarionet in the corner, 
sometimes taking it an inch or so from 
his mouth for a moment while he 
stopped to gaze at them, with a vague 
impression that somebody had said 
something. 

“ And your father, your poor father, 
Amy. Because he is not free, to show 
himself and to speak for himself, you 
would let such people insult him with 
impunity. If you don’t feel for your- 
self because you go out to work, you 
might at least feel for him, I should 
think, knowing what he has undergone 
so long.” 

Poor Little Dorrit felt the injustice 
of this taunt rather sharply. The re- 
membrance of last night added a barbed 
ointtoit. She said nothing in reply, 
ut turned her chair from the table 
towards the fire. Uncle, after making 


142 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


one more pause, blew a dismal wail and 
went on again. 

Fanny was passionate with the tea- 
cups and the bread as long as her pas- 
sion lasted, and then protested that she 
was the wretchedest girl in the world, 
and she wished she was dead. After 
that, her crying became remorseful, and 
she got up and put her arms round her 
sister. Little Dorrit tried to stop her 
from saying anything, but she answered 
that she would, she must ! Thereupon 
she said again and again, “ I beg your 
pardon, Amy,” and “Forgive me, 
Amy,” almost as passionately as she 
had said what she regretted. 

“ But indeed, indeed, Amy,” she re- 
sumed, when they were seated in sisterly 
accord side by side, “ I hope and I 
think you would have seen this differ- 
ently, if you had known a little more of 
Society.” 

“ Perhaps I might, Fanny,” said the 
mild Little Dorrit. 

“ You see, while you have been do- 
mestic and resignedly shut up there, 
Amy,” pursued her sister, gradually 
beginning to patronize, “ I have been 
out, moving more in Society, and may 
have been getting proud and spirited, 
— more than I ought to be, perhaps?” 

Little Dorrit answered, “Yes. O 
yes ! ” 

“ And while you have been thinking 
of the dinner or the clothes, I may have 
been thinking, you know, of the family. 
Now, may it notLe^so, Amy? ” 

Little Dorrit again nodded, “ Yes,” 
with a more cheerfull face than heart. 

“ Especially as we know,” said Fan- 
ny, that there certainly is a tone in 
the place to which you have been so 
true, which does belong to it, and which 
does make it different from other as- 
pects of Society. So kiss me once 
again, Amy, dear, and we will agree 
that we may both be right, and that you 
are a tranquil, domestic, home-loving, 
good girl.” 

The clarionet had been lamenting 
most pathetically during this dialogue, 
but was cut short now by Fanny’s an- 
nouncement that it was time to go ;• 
which she conveyed to her uncle by 
shutting up his scrap of music, and tak- 
ing the clarionet out of his mouth. 


Little Dorrit parted from them at the 
door, and hastened back to the Mar- 
shalsea. It fell dark there sooner than 
elsewhere, and going into it that even- 
ing was like going into a deep trench. 
The shadow of the wall was on every 
object. Not least, upon the figure in 
the old gray gown and the black velvet 
cap, as it turned towards her when she 
opened the door of the dim room. 

“ Why not upon me too ! ” thought 
Little Dorrit, with the door yet in her 
hand. “ It was not unreasonable in 
Fanny.” 


, CHAPTER XXL 

MR. MERDLE’S COMPLAINT. 

Upon that establishment of state, the 
Merdle establishment in Harley Street, 
Cavendish Square, there was the shad- 
ow of no more common wall than the 
fronts of other establishments of state 
on the opposite side of the street. Like 
unexceptionable Society, the opposing 
rows of houses in Harley Street were 
very grim with one another. Indeed, 
the mansions and their inhabitants 
were so much alike in that respect, that 
the people were often to be found drawn 
up on opposite sides of dinner-tables, in 
the shade =of their own loftiness, staring 
at the other side of the way with the 
dulness of the houses. 

Everybody knows how like the street 
the two dinner-rows of people who take 
their stand by the street will be. The 
expressionless uniform twenty houses, 
all to be knocked at and rung at in 
the same form, all approachable by the 
same dull steps, all fended off by 
the same pattern of railing, all with 
the same impracticable fire-escapes, the 
same inconvenient fixtures in their 
heads, and everything without excep- 
tion to be taken at a high valuation, — 
who has not dined with these? The 
house so drearily out of repair, the 
occasional bow-window, the stuccoed 
house, the new'ly-fronted house, the 
corner house with nothing but angular 
rooms, the house with the blinds always 
down, the house with the hatchment 
always up, the house w'here the col- 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


143 


lector has called for one quarter of an 
Idea, and found nobody at home, — 
who has not dined with these? The 
house that nobody will take, and is to 
be had a bargain, — who does not know 
her ? The showy house that was taken 
for life by the disappointed gentleman, 
and which does n’t suit him at all, — 
who is unacquainted with that haunted 
habitation ? 

Harley Street, Cavendish Square, 
was more than aware of Mr. and Mrs. 
Merdle. Intruders there were in Har- 
ley Street of whom it was not aware ; 
but Mr. and Mrs. Merdle it delighted 
to honor. Society was aware of Air. 
and Mrs. Merdle. Society had said, 
“ Let us license them ; let us know 
them.” 

Mr. Merdle was immensely rich ; a 
man of prodigious enterprise ; a Midas 
without the ears, who turned all he 
touched to gold. He was in everything 
good, from banking to building. He 
was in Parliament, of course. He was 
in the City, necessarily. He was Chair- 
man of this, Trustee of that, President 
of the other. The weightiest of men 
had said to projectors, “ Now, what 
name have you got? Have you got 
Merdle?” And, the reply being in the 
negative, had said, “Then I won’t look 
at you.” 

This great and fortunate man had 
provided that extensive bosom, which 
required so much room to be unfeeling 
enough in, with a nest of crimson and 
gold some fifteen years before. It was 
not a bosom to repose upon, but it was 
a capital bosom to hang jewels upon. 
Mr. Merdle wanted something to hang 
jewels upon, and he bought it for the 
purpose. Storr and Mortimer might 
have married on the same speculation. 

Like all his other speculations, it was 
sound and successful. The jewels 
showed to the richest advantage. The 
bosom, moving in Society with the 
jewels displayed upon it, attracted gen- 
eral admiration. Society approving, 
Air. Alerdle was satisfied. He was the 
most disinterested of men, — did every- 
thing for Society, and got as little for 
himself, out of all his gain and care, as 
a man might. 

That is to say, it may be supposed 


that he got all he wanted, otherwise 
with unlimited wealth he would have 
got it. But his desire was to the ut- 
most to satisfy Society (whatever that 
was), and take up all its drafts upon 
him for tribute. He did not shine in 
company ; he had not very much to say 
for himself ; he was a reserved man, 
w r ith a broad, overhanging, watchful 
head, that particular kind of dull red 
color in his cheeks which is rather stale 
than fresh, and a somewhat uneasy ex- 
pression about his coat-cuffs, as if they 
were in his confidence, and had reasons 
for being anxious to hide his hands. 
In the little he said, he was a pleasant 
man enough ; plain, emphatic about 
public and private confidence, and tena- 
cious of the utmost deference being 
shown by every, one, in all things, to 
Society. In this same Society (if that 
were it which came to his dinners, and 
to Airs. Alerdle’s receptions and con- 
certs), he hardly seemed to enjoy him- 
self much, and was mostly to be found 
against walls and behind doors. Also 
when he went out to it, instead of its 
coming home to him, he seemed a little 
fatigued, and upon the whole rather 
more disposed for bed ; but he was 
always cultivating it, nevertheless, and 
always moving in it, and always laying 
out money on it with the greatest lib- 
erality. 

Airs. Alerdle’s first husband had been 
a colonel, under whose auspices the 
bosom had entered into competition 
with the snows of North America, and 
had come off at little disadvantage in 
point of whiteness, and at none in point 
of coldness. The colonel’s son was 
Airs. Alerdle’s only child. He was of a 
chuckle-headed high-shouldered make, 
with a general appearance of being not 
so much a young man as a swelled boy. 
He had given so few signs of reason, 
that a byword went among his compan- 
ions that his brain had been frozen up 
in a mighty frost which prevailed at St. 
John’s, New Brunswick, at the period 
of his birth there, and had never thawed 
from that hour. Another byword rep- 
resented him as having in his infancy, 
through the negligence of a nurse, fall- 
en out of a high window on his head, 
which had been heard by responsible 


144 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


witnesses to crack. It is probable that 
both these representations were of ex 
post facto origin ; the young gentleman 
(whose expressive name was Sparkler) 
being monomaniacal in offering mar- 
riage to all manner of undesirable young 
ladies, and in remarking of every suc- 
cessive young lady to whom he tendered 
a matrimonial proposal that she was “ a 
doosed fine gal — well educated too — 
with no biggodd nonsense about her.” 

A son-in-law, with these limited tal- 
ents, might have been a clog upon an- 
other man ; but Mr. Merdle did not 
want a son-in-law for himself; he want- 
ed a son-in-law for Society. Mr. 
Sparkler having been in the Guards, 
and being in the habit of frequenting 
all the races, and all the lounges, and 
all the parties, and being well known, 
Society was satisfied with its son-in-law. 
This happy result Mr. Merdle would 
have considered well attained, though 
Mr. Sparkler had been a more expen- 
sive article. And he did not get Mr. 
Sparkler by any means cheap for So- 
ciety, even as it was. 

There was a dinner giving in the 
Harley Street establishment, while Lit- 
tle Dorrit was stitching at her father’s 
new shirts by his side that night ; and 
there were magnates from the Court 
and magnates from the City, magnates 
from the Commons and magnates from 
the Lords, magnates from the bench 
and magnates from the bar, Bishop 
magnates, Treasury magnates, Horse 
Guards magnates, Admiralty magnates, 
— all the magnates that keep us going, 
and sometimes trip us up. 

“I am told,” said Bishop magnate to 
Horse Guards, “that Mr. Merdle has 
made another enormous hit. They say 
a hundred thousand pounds.” 

Horse Guards had heard two. 

Treasury had heard three. 

Bar, handling his persuasive double 
eye-glass, was by no means clear but 
that it might be four. It was one of 
those happy strokes of calculation 
and combination the result of which it 
was difficult to estimate. It was one 
of those instances of a comprehensive 
grasp, associated with habitual luck and 
characteristic boldness, of which an age 
presented us but few. But here was 


Brother Bellows, who had been in the 
great Bank case, and who could prob- 
ably tell us more. What did Brother 
Bellows put this new success at? 

Brother Bellows was on his way to 
make his bow to the bosom, and could 
only tell them in passing that he had 
heard it stated, with great appearance 
of truth, as being worth, from first to 
last, half a million of money. 

Admiralty said Mr. Merdle was a 
wonderful man. Treasury said he was 
a new power in the country, and would 
be able to buy up the whole House of 
Commons. Bishop said he was glad to 
think that this wealth flowed into the 
coffers of a gentleman who was always 
disposed to maintain the best interests 
of Society. 

Mr. Merdle himself was usually late 
on these occasions, as a man still de- 
tained in the clutch of giant enterprises 
when other men had shaken off their 
dwarfs for the day. On this occasion, 
he was the last arrival. Treasury said 
Merdle’s work punished him a little. 
Bishop said he was glad to think that 
this wealth flowed into the coffers of a 
gentleman who accepted it with meek- 
ness. 

Powder ! There was so much Pow- 
der in waiting, that it flavored the din- 
ner. Pulverous particles got into the 
dishes, and Society’s meats had a sea- 
soning of first-rate footman. Mr. Mer- 
dle took down a countess who was 
secluded somewhere in the core of an 
immense dress, to which she was in the 
proportion of the heart to the overgrown 
cabbage. If so low a simile may be 
admitted, the dress went down the stair- 
case like a richly brocaded Jack in the 
Green, and nobody knew what sort of 
small person carried it. 

Society had everything it could want, 
and could not want, for dinner. It had 
everything to look at, and everything 
to eat, and everything to drink. It is 
to be hoped it enjoyed itself ; for Mr. 
Merdle’s own share of the repast might 
have been paid for with eighteen-pence. 
Mrs. Merdle was magnificent. The 
chief butler was the next magnificent 
institution of the day. He was the 
stateliest man in company. He did 
nothing, but he looked on as few other 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


men could have done. He was Mr. 
Merdle’s last gift to Society. Mr. 
Merdle didn’t want him, and was put 
out of countenance when the great 
creature looked at him ; but inappeas- 
able Society would have him, and 
had got him. 

The invisible countess carried out the 
Green at the usual stage of the enter- 
tainment, and the file of beauty was 
closed up by the bosom. Treasury 
said, Juno. Bishop said, Judith. 

Bar fell into discussion with Horse 
Guards concerning courts - martial. 
Brother Bellows and Bench struck in. 
Other magnates paired off. Mr. Mer- 
dle sat silent, and looked at the table- 
cloth. Sometimes a magnate addressed 
him to turn the stream of his own par- 
ticular discussion towards him ; but 
Mr. Merdle seldom gave much atten- 
tion to it, or did more than rouse him- 
self from his calculations avid pass the 
wine. 

When they rose, so many of the mag- 
nates had something to say to Mr. Mer- 
dle individually, that he held little 
levees by the sideboard, and checked 
them off as they went out at the door. 

Treasury hoped he might venture to 
congratulate one of England’s world- 
famed capitalists and merchant-princes 
(he had turned that original sentiment 
in the house a few times, and it came 
easy to him) on a new achievement. 
To extend the triumphs of such men, 
was to extend the triumphs and re- 
sources of the nation : and Treasury 
felt — he gave Mr. Merdle to under- 
stand — patriotic on the subject. 

“Thank you, my lord,” said Mr. Mer- 
dle, — “ thank you. I accept your con- 
gratulations with pride, and I am glad 
you approve.” 

“Why, I don’t unreservedly approve, 
my dear Mr. Merdle. Because,” smil- 
ing Treasury turned him by the arm 
towards the sideboard and spoke ban- 
teringly, “ it never can be worth your 
while to come among us and help us.” 

Mr. Merdle felt honored by the — 

“ No, no,” said Treasury, “ that is 
not the light in which one so distin- 
guished for practical knowledge and 
1 great foresight can be expected to re- 
gard it. If we should ever be happily 


i45 

enabled, by accidentally possessing the 
control over circumstances, to propose 
to one so eminent to — to come among 
us, and give us the weight of his in- 
fluence, knowledge, and character, we 
could only propose it to him as a duty. 
In fact, as a duty that he owed to So- 
ciety.” 

Mr. Merdle intimated that Society 
was the apple of his eye, and that its 
claims were paramount to every other 
consideration. Treasury moved on, and 
Bar came up. 

Bar, with his little insinuating Jury 
droop, and fingering his persuasive 
double eye-glass, hoped he might be 
excused if he mentioned to one of the 
greatest converters of the root of all evil 
into the root of all good, who had for a 
long time reflected a shining lustre on 
the annals even of our commercial coun- 
try — if he mentioned, disinterestedly, 
and as, what we lawyers called in our 
pedantic way, amicus curice, a fact that 
had come by accident within his knowl- 
edge. He had been required to look 
over the title of a very considerable es- 
tate in one of the eastern counties, — ly- 
ing, in fact, for Mr. Merdle knew we 
lawyers loved to be particular, on the 
borders of two of the eastern counties. 
Now, the title was perfectly sound, and 
the estate was to be purchased by one 
who. had the command of — Money 
(Jury droop and persuasive eye-glass), 
on remarkably advantageous terms. 
This had come to Bar’s knowledge only 
that day, and it had occurred to him, 
“ I shall have the honor of dining with 
my esteemed friend Mr. Merdle this 
evening, and, strictly between ourselves, 
I will mention the opportunity.” Such 
a purchase would involve not only great 
legitimate political influence, but some 
half-dozen church presentations of con- 
siderable annual value. Now, that Mr, 
Merdle was already at no loss to dis- 
cover means of occupying even his cap- 
ital, and of fully employing even his 
active and vigorous intellect, Bar well 
knew ; but he would venture to suggest 
that the question arose in his mind, 
whether one who had deservedly gained 
so high a position and so European a 
reputation did not owe it, — we would 
not say to himself, but we would say to 


10 


146 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


Society, to possess himself of such in- 
fluences as these ; and to exercise them, 
we would not say for his own, or for 
his party’s, but we would say for Soci- 
ety’s, benefit. 

Mr. Merdle again expressed himself 
as wholly devoted to that object of his 
constant consideration, and Bar took 
his persuasive eye-glass up the grand 
staircase. Bishop then came undesign- 
edly sliding in the direction of the side- 
board. 

Surely the goods of this world, it oc- 
curred in an accidental way to Bishop 
to remark, could scarcely be directed 
into happier channels than when they 
accumulated under the magic touch of 
the wise and sagacious, who, while they 
knew the just value of riches (Bishop 
tried here to look as if he were rather 
poor himself), were aware of their 
importance, judiciously governed and 
rightly distributed, to the welfare of our 
brethren at large. 

Mr. Merdle with humility expressed 
his conviction that Bishop couldn’t 
mean him, and with inconsistency ex- 
pressed his high gratification in Bish- 
op’s good opinion. 

Bishop then — jauntily stepping out 
a little with his well-shaped right leg, 
as though he said to Mr. Merdle “ don’t 
mind the apron : a mere form ! ” — put 
this case to his good friend : — 

Whether it had occurred to his good 
friend, that Society might not unrea- 
sonably hope that one so blest in his 
undertakings, and whose example on 
his pedestal was so influential with it, 
would shed a little money in the direc- 
tion of a mission or so to Africa? 

Mr. Merdle signifying that the idea 
should have his best attention, Bishop 
put another case : — 

Whether his good friend had at all 
interested himself in the proceedings 
of our Combined Additional Endowed 
Dignitaries Committee, and whether it 
had occurred to him that to shed a lit- 
tle money in that direction might be a 
great conception finely executed ? 

Mr. Merdle made a similar reply, 
and Bishop explained his reason for in- 
quiring. 

Society looked to such men as his 
good friend to do such things. It was 


not that he looked to them, but that 
Society looked to them. Just as it was 
not Our Committee who wanted the 
Additional Endowed Dignitaries, but it 
was Society that was in a state of the 
most agonizing uneasiness of mind un- 
til it got them. He begged to assure 
his good friend, that he was extremely 
sensible of his good friend’s regard on 
all occasions for the best interests of 
Society ; and he considered that he was 
at once consulting those interests, and 
expressing the feeling of Society, when 
he wished him continued prosperity, 
continued increase of riches, and con- 
tinued things in general. 

Bishop then betook himself up stairs, 
and the other magnates gradually float- 
ed up after him until there was no one 
left below but Mr. Merdle. That gen- 
tleman, after looking at the table-cloth 
until the soul of the chief butler glowed 
with a noble resentment, went slowly 
up after the rest, and became of no ac- 
count in the stream of people on the 
grand staircase. Mrs. Merdle was at 
home, the best of the jewels were hung 
out to be seen, Society got what it 
came for, Mr. Merdle drank twopenny- 
worth of tea in a corner and got more 
than he wanted. 

Among the evening magnates was a 
famous physician, who knew everybody 
and whom everybody knew. On en- 
tering at the door, he came upon Mr. 
Merdle drinking his tea in a corner, 
and touched him on the arm. 

Mr. Merdle started. “Oh! It’s 
you ! ” 

“ Any better to-day ? ” 

“No,” said Mr. Merdle, “I am no 
better.” 

“ A pity I didn’t see you this morn- 
ing. Pray come to me to-morrow, or 
let me come to you.” 

“ Well ! ” he replied. “ I will come 
to-morrow as I drive by. - ” 

Bar and Bishop had both been by- 
standers during this short dialogue* and 
as Mr. Merdle was swept away by the 
crowd, they made their remarks upon it 
to the Physician. Bar said, there was 
a certain point of mental strain beyond 
which no man could go ; that the point 
varied with various textures of brain 
and peculiarities of constitution, as he 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


i47 


had had occasion to notice in several of 
his learned brothers ; but, the point of 
endurance passed by a line’s breadth, 
depression and dyspepsia ensued. Not 
to intrude on the sacred mysteries of 
medicine, he took it, now (with the 
Jury droop and persuasive eye-glass), 
that this was Merdle’s case? Bishop 
said that when he was a young man, 
and had fallen for a brief space into the 
habit of writing sermons on Saturdays, 
a habit which all young sons of the 
church should sedulously avoid, he had 
frequently been sensible of a depression 
arising as he supposed from an over- 
taxed intellect, upon which the yolk of 
a new-laid egg, beaten up by the good 
woman in whose house he at that time 
lodged, with a glass of sound sherry, 
nutmeg, and powdered sugar, acted like 
a charm. Without presuming to offer 
so simple a remedy to the consideration 
of so profound a professor of the great 
healing art, he would venture to inquire 
whether, the strain being by way of in- 
tricate calculations, the spirits might 
not (humanly speaking) be restored to 
their tone by a gentle and yet generous 
stimulant? 

“ Yes,” said the physician, “yes, you 
are both right. But 1 may as well tell 
you that I can find nothing the matter 
with Mr. Merdle. He has the consti- 
tution of a rhinoceros, the digestion of 
an ostrich, and the concentration of an 
oyster. As to nerves, Mr. Merdle is of 
a cool temperament, and not a sensitive 
man : is about as invulnerable, I should 
say, as Achilles. How such a man 
should suppose himself unwell without 
reason, you may think strange. But I 
have found nothing the matter with 
him. He may have some deep-seated, 
recondite complaint. I can’t say. I 
only say, that at present I have not 
found it out.” 

There was no shadow of Mr. Mer- 
dle’s complaint on the bosom now dis- 
playing precious stones in rivalry with 
many similar superb jewel-stands ; there 
was no shadow of Mr. Merdle’s com- 
plaint on young Sparkler hovering 
about the rooms, monoman iacally seek- 
ing any sufficiently ineligible young 
lady with no nonsense about her ; there 
was no shadow of Mr. Merdle’s com- 


plaint on the Barnacles and Stiltstalk- 
ings, of whom whole colonies were 
present ; or on any of the company. 
Even on himself, its shadow was faint 
enough as he moved about among the 
throng, receiving homage. 

Mr. Merdle’s complaint. Society and 
he had so much to do with one another 
in all things else, that it is hard to im- 
agine his complaint, if he had one, be- 
ing solely his own affair. Had he that 
deep-seated, recondite complaint, and 
did any doctor find it out? Patience. 
In the mean time, the shadow of the 
Marshalsea wall was a real darkening 
influence, and could be seen on the 
Dorrit Family at any stage of the sun’s 
course. 


CHAPTER XXII. 

A PUZZLE. 

Mr. Clennam did not increase in 
favor with the Father of the Marshal- 
sea in the ratio of his increasing visits. 
His obtuseness on the great Testimo- 
nial question was not calculated to awak- 
en admiration in the paternal breast, 
but had rather a tendency to give of- 
fence in that sensitive quarter, and to 
be regarded as a positive shortcoming 
in point of gentlemanly feeling. An 
impression of disappointment, occa- 
sioned by the discovery that Mr. Clen- 
nam scarcely possessed that delicacy 
for which, in the confidence of his na- 
ture, he had been inclined to give him 
credit, began to darken the fatherly 
mind in connection with that gentle- 
man. The father went so far as to say, 
in his private family circle, that he 
feared Mr. Clennam was not a man of 
high instincts. He was happy, he ob- 
served, in his public capacity as leader 
and representative of the college, to 
receive Mr. Clennam when he called to 
pay his respects; but he didn’t find 
that he got on with him personally. 
There appeared to be something (he 
didn’t know what it was) wanting in 
him. Howbeit, the father did not fail 
in any outward show of politeness, but, 
on the contrary, honored him with 
much attention ; perhaps cherishing the 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


148 

hope that, although not a man of a suf- 
ficiently brilliant and spontaneous turn 
of mind to repeat his former testimonial 
unsolicited, it might still be within the 
compass of his nature to bear the part 
of a responsive gentleman in any cor- 
respondence that way tending. 

In the threefold capacity, of the gen- 
tleman from outside who had been acci- 
dentally locked in on the night of his 
first appearance, of the gentleman from 
outside who had inquired into the affairs 
of the Father of the Marshalsea with 
the stupendous idea of getting him out, 
and of the gentleman from outside who 
took an interest in the child of the Mar- 
shalsea, Clennam soon became a visitor 
of mark. He was not surprised by the 
attentions he received from Mr. Chiv- 
ery, when that officer w r as on the lock, 
for he made little distinction between 
Mr. Chivery’s politeness and that of 
the other turnkeys. It was on one par- 
ticular afternoon that Mr. Chivery sur- 
prised him all at once, and stood forth 
from his companions in bold relief. 

Mr. Chivery, by some artful exercise 
of his power of clearing the lodge, had 
contrived to rid it of all sauntering 
collegians ; so that Clennam, coming 
out of the prison, should find him on 
duty alone. 

“(Private) I ask your pardon, sir,” 
said Mr. Chivery, in a secret manner ; 
“ but which way might you be go- 
ing?” 

“Iam going over the Bridge.” He 
saw in Mr. Chivery, with some astonish- 
ment, quite an Allegory of Silence, as 
he stood with his key on his lips. 

“(Private) I ask your pardon again,” 
said Mr. Chivery, “but could you go 
round by Horsemonger Lane? Could 
you by any means find time to look in 
at that address?” handing him a little 
card, printed for circulation among the 
connection of Chivery and Co., Tobac- 
conists, Importers of pure Havana 
Cigars, Bengal Cheroots, and Fine-fla- 
vored Cubas, Dealers in Fancy Snuffs, 
& c., &c. 

“ (Private) It ain’t tobacco business,” 
said Mr. Chivery. “The truth is, it’s 
my wife. She ’s wishful to say a word to 
you, sir, upon a point respecting — yes,” 
said Mr. Chivery, answering Clennam’s 


look of apprehension with a nod, “ re- 
specting her.” 

“ I will make a point of seeing your 
wife directly.” 

“ Thank you, sir. Much obliged. 
It ain’t above ten minutes out of your 
way. Please to ask for Mrs. Chivery ! ” 
These instructions, Mr. Chivery, who 
had already let him out, cautiously 
called through a little slide in the outer 
door, which he could draw back from 
within for the inspection of visitors, 
when it pleased him. 

Arthur Clennam, with the card in his 
hand, betook himself to the address 
set forth upon it, and speedily arrived 
there. It was a very small establish- 
ment, wherein a decent woman sat be- 
hind the counter working at her needle. 
Little jars of tobacco, little boxes of 
cigars, a little assortment of pipes, a 
little jar or two of snuff, and a little in- 
strument like a shoeing-horn for serv- 
ing it out, composed the retail stock in 
trade. 

Arthur mentioned his name, and his 
having promised to call on the solicita- 
tion of Mr. Chivery. About something 
relating to Miss Dorrit, he believed. 
Mrs. Chivery at once laid aside h§r 
w'ork, rose up from her seat behind the 
counter, and deploringly shook her 
head. 

“You may see him now,” said she, 
“ if you ’ll condescend to take a peep.” 

With these mysterious vrords, she 
preceded the visitor into a little parlor 
behind the shop, with a little window in it 
commanding a very little, dull back yard. 
In this yard a wash of sheets and table- 
cloths tried (in vain, for want of air) to 
get itself dried on a line or two ; and 
among those flapping articles was sitting 
in a chair, like the last mariner left 
alive on the deck of a damp ship with- 
out the power of furling the sails, a little 
w'oe-begone young man. 

“Our John,” said Mrs. Chivery. 

Not to be deficient in interest, Clen- 
nam asked what he might be doing 
there ? 

“It’s the only change he takes,” 
said Mrs. Chivery, shaking her head 
afresh. “ He won’t go out, even in the 
back yard, w'hen there ’s no linen ; 
but when there ’s linen to keep the neigh- 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


149 


bors’ eyes off, he ’ll sit there hours. 
Hours, he will. Says he feels as if it 
was groves ! ” Mrs. Chivery shook 
her head again, put her apron in a 
motherly way to her eyes, and recon- 
ducted her visitor into the regions of 
the business. 

“ Please to take a seat, sir,” said Mrs. 
Chivery. “ Miss Dorrit is the matter 
with our John, sir ; he ’s a breaking 
his heart for her, and I would wish to 
take the liberty to ask how it ’s to 
be made good to his parents when 
busf ? ” 

Mrs. Chivery, who was a comfortable- 
looking woman, much respected about 
Horsemonger Lane for her feelings and 
her conversation, uttered this speech 
with fell composure, and immediately 
afterwards began again to shake her 
head and dry her eyes. 

“ Sir,” said she, in continuation, “ you 
are acquainted with the family, and 
have interested yourself with the family, 
and are influential w'ith the family. If 
you can promote views calculated to 
make two young people happy, let me, 
for our John’s sake, and for both their 
sakes, implore you so to do.” 

“ I have been so habituated,” re- 
turned Arthur, at a loss, “during the 
short time I have known her, to consid- 
er Little, — I have been so habituated 
to consider Miss Dorrit in a light alto- 
gether removed from that in which you 
present her to me, that you quite take 
me by surprise. Does she know your 
son ? ” 

“Brought up together, sir,” said 
Mrs. Chivery. “ Played together ! ” 

“ Does she know your son as her 
admirer? ” 

“ O, bless you, sir,” said Mrs. Chiv- 
ery, with a sort of triumphant shiver, 
“she never could have seen him on a 
Sunday without knowing he was that. 
His cane alone would have told it long 
ago, if nothing else had. Young men 
like John don’t take to ivory hands a 
pinting, for nothing. How did I first 
know it myself? Similarly.” 

“ Perhaps Miss Dorrit may not be 
so ready as you, you see.” 

“ Then she knows it, sir,” said Mrs. 
Chivery, “by word of mouth.” 

“ Are you sure ? ” 


“Sir,” said Mrs. Chivery, “sure and 
certain as in this house I am. I see 
my son go out with my own eyes when 
in this house I was, and I see my 
son come in with my own eyes when 
in this house I was, and I know he 
done it ! ” Mrs. Chivery derived a 
surprising force of emphasis from the 
foregoing circumstantiality and repeti- 
tion. 

“May I ask you how he came to 
fall into the ‘desponding state which 
causes you so much uneasiness?” 

“That,” said Mrs. Chivery, “took 
place .,on that same day when to this 
house 1 see that John with these eyes 
return. Never been himself in this 
house since. Never was like what he 
has been since, not from the hour when 
to this house seven year ago me and 
his father, as tenants by the quarter, 
came ! ” An effect in the nature of an 
affidavit was gained for this speech by 
Mrs. Chivery’s peculiar power of con- 
struction. 

“ May I venture to inquire what is 
your version of the matter?” 

“You may,” said Mrs. Chivery, 
“ and I will give it you in honor and in 
word as true as in this shop I stand. 
Our John has every one’s good word 
and every one’s good wish. He played 
with her as a child when in that yard a 
child she played. He has known her 
ever since. He went out upon the 
Sunday afternoon when in this very 
parlor he had dined, and met her, with 
appointment or without appointment, 
which I do not pretend to say. He 
made his offer to her. Her brother and 
sister is high in their views, and against 
our John. Her father is all for himself 
in his views, and against sharing her 
with any one. Under which circum- 
stances she has answered our John, 

‘ No, John, I cannot have you, I can- 
not have any husband, it is not my 
intentions ever to become a wife, it is 
my intentions to be always a sacrifice, 
farewell, find another worthy of you, and 
forget me ! ’ This is the way m which 
she is doomed to be a constant slave 
to them that are not worthy that a 
constant slave she unto them should 
be. This is the way in which our 
John has come to find no pleasure but 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


150 

in taking cold among the linen, and in 
showing in that yard, as in that yard I 
have myself shown you, a broken-down 
ruin that goes home to his mother’s 
heart ! ” Here the good woman point- 
ed to the little window, whence her son 
might be seen sitting disconsolate in 
the tuneless groves ; and again shook 
her head and wiped her eyes, and 
besought him, for the united sakes of 
both the young people, to exercise his 
influence towards the bright reversal 
of these dismal events. 

She-Avas so confident in her exposi- 
tion of the case, and it was so undenia- 
bly founded on correct premises in so 
far as the relative positions of Little 
Dorrit and her family were concerned, 
that Clennam could not feel positive 
on the other side. He had come to 
attach to Little Dorrit an interest so 
peculiar ! — an interest that removed 
her from, while it grew out of, the 
common and coarse things surrounding 
her, — that he found it disappointing, 
disagreeable, almost painful, to suppose 
her in love with young Mr. Chivery in 
the back yard, or any such person. 
On the other hand, he reasoned with 
himself that she was just as good and 
just as true, in love with him, as not in 
love with him ; and that to make a 
kind of domesticated fairy of her, on 
the penalty of isolation at heart from 
the only people she knew, would be 
but a weakness of his own fancy, and 
not a kind one. Still, her youthful and 
ethereal appearance, her timid manner, 
the charm of her sensitive voice and 
eyes, the very many respects in which 
she had interested him out of her own 
individuality, and the strong difference 
between herself and those about her, 
were not in unison, and were deter- 
mined not to be in unison, with this 
newly presented idea. 

H,e told the worthy Mrs. Chivery, 
after turning these things over in his 
mind, — he did that, indeed, while she 
was yet speaking, — that he might be 
relied upon to do his utmost at all 
times to promote the happiness of 
Miss Dorrit, and to further the wishes 
of her heart, if it were in his power to 
do so, and if he could discover what 
they were. At the same time, he cau- 


tioned her against assumptions and 
appearances ; enjoined strict silence 
and secrecy, lest Miss Dorrit should 
be made unhappy ; and particularly 
advised her to endeavor to win her 
son’s confidence, and so to make 
quite sure of the state of the case. 
Mrs. Chivery considered the latter 
precaution superfluous, but said she 
would try. She shook her head as if 
she had not derived all the comfort she 
had fondly expected from this inter- 
view, but thanked him nevertheless 
for the trouble he had kindly taken. 
They then parted good friends, and 
Arthur walked away. 

The crowd in the street jostling the 
crowd in his mind, and the two crowds 
making a confusion, he avoided London 
Bridge, and turned off in the quieter 
direction of the Iron Bridge. He had 
scarcely set foot upon it, when he saw 
Little Dorrit walking on before him. It 
was a pleasant day, with a light breeze 
blowing, and she seemed to have that 
minute come there for air. He had left 
her in her father’s room within an 
hour. 

It was a timely chance, favorable to 
his wish of observing her face and man- 
ner when no one else was by. He 
quickened his pace ; but, before he 
reached her, she turned her head. 

“ Have I startled you?” he asked. 

“ I thought I knew the step,” she 
answered, hesitating. 

“And did you know it, Little Dor- 
rit? You could hardly have expected 
mine.” 

“ I did not expect any. But when I 
heard a step, I thought it — sounded 
like yours.” 

“ Are you going farther?” 

“ No, sir, I am only walking here for 
a little change.” 

They walked together, and she re- 
covered her confiding manner with him, 
and looked up in his face, as she said, 
after glancing around, — 

“It is so strange. Perhaps you can 
hardly understand it. I sometimes 
have a sensation as if it was almost 
unfeeling to walk here ? ” 

“Unfeeling?” 

“To see the river, and so much sky, 
and so many objects, and such change 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


and motion. Then to go back, you 
know, and find him in the same cramped 
place.” 

‘‘Ah, yes ! But, going back, you must 
remember that you take with you the 
spirit and influence of such things, to 
cheer him.” 

“ Do I ? I hope I may ! I am 
afraid you fancy too much, sir, and make 
me out too powerful. If you were in 
prison, could I bring such comfort to 
you ? ” 

“Yes, Little Dorrit. I am sure of 
it!” 

He gathered from a tremor on her 
lip, and a passing shadow of great agi- 
tation on her face, that her mind was 
with her father. He remained silent 
for a few moments, that she might re- 
gain her composure. The little Dorrit 
trembling on his arm was less in unison 
than ever with Mrs. Chivery’s theory, 
and yet was not irreconcilable with 
a new fancy, which sprung up within 
him, that there might be some one else 
in the hopeless — newer fancy still — 
in the hopeless unattainable distance. 

They turned, and Clennam said, 
Here was Maggy coming ! Little Dor- 
rit looked up, surprised, and they con- 
fronted Maggy, who brought herself at 
sight of them to a dead stop. She 
had been trotting along, so preoccupied 
and busy, that she had not recognized 
them until they turned upon her. She 
was now in a moment so conscience- 
stricken, that her very basket partook 
of the change. 

“ Maggy, you promised me to stop 
near father.” 

“ So I would, little mother, only he 
would n’t let me. If he takes and sends 
me out, I must go. If he takes and 
says, ‘ Maggy, you hurry away and back 
with that letter, and you shall have a 
sixpence if the answer’s a good ’un,’ 
1 must take it. Lor, little mother, 
what ’s a poor thing of ten year old to 
do? And if Mr. Tip, — if he happens 
to be a coming in as I come out, and if 
he says, ‘Where are you going, Mag- 
♦gy?’ and if I says, ‘I’m a going so 
and so,’ and if he says, ‘ I ’ll have a 
Try too,’ and if he goes into the George 
and writes a letter, and if he gives it 
me and says, ‘ Take that one to the 


151 

same place, and if the answer ’s a good 
’un I ’ll give you a shilling,’ it ain’t my 
fault;- mother ! ” 

Arthur read, in Little Dorrit’s down- 
cast eyes, to whom she foresaw that the 
letters were addressed. 

“I’m a going so and so. There ! 
That ’s where I am a going to,” said 
Maggy. “ I ’m a going so and so. It 
ain’t you, little mother, that’s got 
anything to do with it, — it ’s you, you 
know,” said Maggy, addressing Arthur. 
“You’d better come, so and so, and 
let me take and give ’em to you.” 

“We will not be so particular as that, 
Maggy. Give them me here,” said 
Clennam, in a low voice. 

“Well, then, come across the road,” 
answered Maggy, in a very loud whis- 
per. “Little mother wasn’t to know 
nothing of it, and she would never 
have known nothing of it, if you had 
only gone, so and so, instead of both- 
ering and loitering about. It ain’t my 
fault. I must do what I am told. 
They ought to be ashamed of them- 
selves for telling me.” 

Clennam crossed to the other side, 
and hurriedly opened the letters. That 
from the father mentioned that, most 
unexpectedly finding himself in the nov- 
el position of having been disappointed 
of a remittance from the City on which 
he had confidently counted, he took up 
his pen, being restrained by the unhap- 
py circumstance of his incarceration 
during three-and-twenty years (doubly 
underlined), from coming himself, as he 
would otherwise certainly have done — 
took up his pen to entreat Mr. Clen- 
nam to advance him the sum of Three 
Pounds Ten Shillings upon his I. O. 
U., which he begged to enclose. That 
from the son set forth that Mr. Clen- 
nam would, he knew, be gratified to 
hear that he had at length obtained 
permanent employment of a highly sat- 
isfactory nature, accompanied with ev- 
ery prospect of complete success in life ; 
but that the temporary inability of his 
employer to pay him his arrears of sala- 
ry to that date (in which condition said 
employer had appealed to that generous 
forbearance in which he trusted he should 
never be wanting towards a fellow-crea- 
ture), combined with the fraudulent 


152 


1 


LITTLE D0RR1T. 


conduct of a false friend, and the pres- 
ent high price of provisions, had re- 
duced him to the verge of ruin, unless 
he could by a quarter before six that 
evening raise the sum of eight pounds. 
This sum, Mr. Clennam would be 
happy to learn, he had, through the 
promptitude of several friends who 
had a lively confidence in his probity, 
already raised, with the exception of a 
trifling balance of one pound seven- 
teen and fourpence ; the loan of which 
balance, for the period of one month, 
would be fraught with the usual be- 
neficent consequences. 

These letters Clennam answered with 
the aid of his pencil and pocket-book, 
on the spot ; sending the father what 
he asked for, and excusing himself 
from compliance with the demand of 
the son. He then commissioned Mag- 
gy to return with his replies, and gave 
her the shilling of which the failure of 
her supplemental enterprise would have 
disappointed her otherwise. 

When he rejoined Little Dorrit, and 
they had begun walking as before, she 
said all at once, — 

“ I think I had better go. I had bet- 
ter go home.” 

‘‘Don’t be distressed,” said Clen- 
nam. “ I have answered the letters. 
They were nothing. You know what 
they were. They were nothing ” 

“ But I am afraid,” she returned, “ to 
leave him, I ant afraid to leave any of 
them. When I am gone, they pervert 
— but they don’t mean it — even Mag- 


gy- 

“It was a very innocent commission 
- that she undertook, poor thing. And in 
keeping it secret from you, she supposed, 
no doubt, that she was only saving you 
uneasiness.” 

“ Yes, I hope so, I hope so. But I 
had better go home! It was but the 
other day that my sister told me I 
had become so used to the prison that 
I had its tone and character It must 
be so. I am sure it must be when I 
see these things. My place is there. 
I am better there. It is unfeeling in 
me to be here when I can do the least 
thing there. Good by. I had far 
better stay at home ! ” 

The agonized way in which she poured 


this out, as if it burst of itself from her 
suppressed heart, made it difficult for 
Clennam to keep the tears from his 
eyes as he saw and heard her. 

“ Don’t call it home, my child ! ” he 
entreated. “ It is always painful to me 
to hear you call it home.” 

“ But it is home ! What else can I 
call home ? Why should I ever forget 
it for a single moment? ” 

“ You never do, dear Little Dorrit, in 
any good and true service.” 

“ I hope not, O I hope not ! But it 
is belter for me to stay there ; much 
better, much more dutiful, much hap- 
pier. Please don’t go with me, let 
me go by myself. Good by. God 
bless you. Thank you, thank you.” 

He felt that it was better to respect 
her entreaty, and did not move while 
her slight form went quickly away 
from him. When it had fluttered out 
of sight, he turned his face towards 
the water, and stood thinking. 

She would have been distressed at 
any time by this discovery of the let- 
ters ; but so much so, and in that un- 
restrainable wav ? 

No. 

When she had seen her father beg- 
ging with his threadbare disguise on, 
when she had entreated him not to 
give her father money, she had been 
distressed, but not like this. Some- 
thing had made her keenly and ad- 
ditionally sensitive just now. Now, 
was there some one in the hopeless un- 
attainable distance ? Or had the sus- 
picion been brought into his mind by 
his own associations of the troubled 
river running beneath the bridge with 
the same river higher up, its changeless 
tune upon the prow of the ferry-boat, 
so many miles an hour the peaceful 
flowing of the stream, here the rushes, 
there the lilies, nothing uncertain or 
unquiet ? 

He thought of his poor child. Little 
Dorrit, for a long time there ; he thought 
of her going home : he thought of her 
in the night ; he thought of her when 
the day came round again. And the 
poor child Little Dorrit thought of 
him — too faithfully, ah, too faithful- 
ly ! — in the shadow of the Marshalsea 
wall. 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

MACHINERY IN MOTION. 

Mr. Meagles bestirred himself with 
such prompt activity in the matter of 
the negotiation with Daniel Doyce 
which Clennafh had intrusted to him, 
that he soon brought it into business 
train, and called on Clennam at nine 
o’clock one morning to make his report. 

“ Doyce is highly gratified by your 
good opinion,” he opened the business 
by saying, “and desires nothing so 
much as that you should examine the 
affairs of the Works for yourself, and 
entirely understand them. He has 
handed me the keys of all his books 
and papers, — here they are jingling in 
this pocket, — and the only charge he 
has given me is, ‘ Let Mr. Clennam have 
the means of putting himself on a per- 
fect equality with me as to knowing 
whatever I know. If it should come to 
nothing after all, he will respect my 
confidence. Unless I was sure of that 
to begin with, I should have nothing to 
do with him.’ And there, you see,” 
said Mr. Meagles, “ you have Daniel 
Doyce all over.” 

“ A very honorable character.” 

“ O yes, to be sure. Not a doubt of 
it. Odd, but very honorable. Very 
odd, though. Now, would you believe, 
Clennam,” said Mr. Meagles, with a 
hearty enjoyment of his friend’s eccen- 
tricity, “ that I had a whole morning 
in What’s-his-name Yard — ” 

“ Bleeding Heart?” 

“ A whole morning in Bleeding 
Heart Yard, before I could induce him 
to pursue the subject at all ? ” 

“ How was that ? ” 

“ How was that, my friend ? I no 
sooner mentioned your name in con- 
nection with it, than he declared off.” 
“ Declared off, on my account ? ” 

“ I no sooner mentioned your name, 
Clennam, than he said, ‘ That will never 
do ! ’ What did he mean by that ? I 
asked him. No matter, Meagles ; that 
would never do. Why would it never 
do? You’ll hardly believe it, Clen- 
nam,” said Mr. Meagles, laughing 
within himself, “ but it came out that it 
would never do, because you and he, 


i S3 

walking down to Twickenham together, 
had glided into a friendly conversation, 
in the course of which he ,had referred 
to his intention of taking a partner, 
supposing at the time that you were as 
firmly and finally settled as Saint Paul’s 
Cathedral. ‘Whereas,’ says he, 4 Mr. 
Clennam might now believe, if I enter- 
tained his proposition, that I had a sin- 
ister and designing motive in what was 
open free speech. Which I can’t bear,’ 
says he ; 4 which I really am too proud 
to bear.’ ” 

“ I should as soon suspect — ” 

“ Of course you would,” interrupted 
Mr. Meagles, “ and so I told him. But 
it took a morning to scale that wall ; 
and I doubt if any other man than my- 
self (he likes me of old) could have got 
his leg over it. Well, Clennam. This 
business-like obstacle surmounted, he 
then stipulated that, before resuming 
with you, I should look over the books 
and form my own opinion. I looked 
over the books, and formed my own 
opinion. 4 Is it, on the whole, for or 
against?’ says he. 4 For,’ says I. 
‘Then,’ says he, 4 you may now, my 
good friend, give Mr. Clennam the 
means of forming his opinion. To en- 
able him to do which, without bias and 
with perfect freedom, I shall go out of 
town for a week.’ And he ’s gone,” 
said Mr. Meagles; “that’s the rich 
conclusion of the thing.” 

44 Leaving me,” said Clennam, “with 
a high sense, I must say, of his candor 
and his — ” 

44 Oddity,” Mr. Meagles struck in. 
“ I should think so ! ” 

It was not exactly the word on Clen- 
nam’s lips, but he forbore to interrupt 
his good-humored friend. 

“And now,” added Mr. Meagles, 
“ you can begin to look into matters as 
soon as you think proper. 1 have un- 
dertaken to explain where you may 
want explanation, but to be strictly im- 
partial, and to do nothing more.” 

They began their perquisitions in 
Bleeding Heart Yard that same fore- 
noon. Little peculiarities were easily 
to be detected by experienced eyes in 
Mr. Doyce’s way of managing his af- 
fairs, but they almost always involved 
some ingenious simplification of a diffi- 


J54 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


culty, and some plain road to the de- 
sired end. That his papers were in ar- 
rear, and that he stood in need of as- 
sistance to develop the capacity of his 
business, was clear enough ; but all the 
results of his undertakings during many 
years were distinctly set forth, and were 
ascertainable with ease. Nothing had 
been done for the purposes of the pend- 
ing investigation ; everything was in its 
enuine working-dress, and in a certain 
onest rugged order. The calculations 
and entries, in his own hand, of which 
there were many, were bluntly written, 
and with no very neat precision ; but 
were always plain, and directed straight 
to the purpose. It occurred to Arthur, 
that a far more elaborate and taking 
show of business — such as the records 
of the Circumlocution Office made per- 
haps — might be far less serviceable, 
as being meant to be far less intelligi- 
ble. 

Three or four days of steady applica- 
tion rendered him master of all the facts 
it was essential to become acquainted 
with. Mr. Meagles was at hand the 
whole time, always ready to illuminate 
any dim place with the bright little safety 
lamp belonging to the scales and scoop. 
Between them, they agreed upon the 
sum it would be fair to offer for the pur- 
chase of a half-share in the business, 
and then Mr. Meagles unsealed a paper 
in which Daniel Doyce had noted the 
amount at which he valued it ; which 
was even something less. Thus, when 
Daniel came back, he found the affair 
as good as concluded. 

“ And I may now avow, Mr. Clen- 
nam,” said he, with a cordial shake of 
the hand, “ that if I had looked high 
and low for a partner, I believe I could 
not have found one more to my mind.” 
“ I say the same,” said Clennam. 
“And I say of both of you,” added 
Mr. Meagles, “that you are well 
matched. You keep him in check, 
Clennam, with your common sense, and 
you stick to the Works, Dan, with 
your — ” 

“Uncommon sense?” suggested 
Daniel, with his quiet smile. 

“You may call it so, if you like, — 
and each of you will be a right-hand to 
the other. Here ’s my own right-hand 


upon it, as a practical man, to both of 
you.” 

The purchase was completed within 
a month. It left Arthur in possession 
of private personal means not exceed- 
ing a few hundred pounds ; but it 
opened to him an active and promising 
career. The three friends dined to- 
gether on the auspicious occasion ; the 
factory and the factory- wives and chil- 
dren made holiday and dined too; even 
Bleeding Heart Yard dined and was full 
of meat. Two months had barely gone 
by in all, when Bleeding Heart Yard 
had become so familiar with short-com- 
mons again that the treat was forgotten 
there ; when nothing seemed new in the 
partnership but the paint of the inscrip- 
tion on the door-posts, Doyce and 
Clennam ; when it appeared even to 
Clennam himself, that he had had the 
affairs of the firm in his mind for years. 

The little counting-house reserved 
for his own occupation was a room of 
wood and glass at the end of a long 
low workshop, filled with benches, and 
vices, and tools, and straps, and 
wheels; which, when they were in gear 
with the steam-engine, went tearing 
round as though they had a suicidal 
mission to grind the business to dust, 
and tear the factory to pieces. A com- 
munication of great trap-doors in the 
floor and roof with the workshop above 
and the workshop below made a shaft 
of light in this perspective, which 
brought to Clennam’s mind the child’s 
old picture-book, w'here similar rays 
were the witnesses of Abel’s murder. 
The noises were sufficiently removed 
and shut out from the counting-house to 
blend into a busy hum, interspersed with 
periodical clinks and thumps. The 
patient figures at work were swarthy 
with the filings of iron and steel that 
danced on every bench and bubbled up 
through every chink in the planking. 
The workshop was arrived at by a 
step-ladder from the outer yard below, 
where it served as a shelter for the 
large grindstone where tools were 
sharpened. The whole had at once a 
fanciful and practical air in Clennam’s 
eyes which was a welcome change ; and, 
as often as he raised them from his first 
work of getting the array of business 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


i55 


documents into perfect order, he glanced 
at these things with a feeling of pleas- 
ure in his pursuit that was new to him. 

Raising his eyes thus one day, he 
was surprised to see a bonnet laboring 
up the step-ladder. The unusual appa- 
rition was followed by another bonnet. 
He then perceived that the first bonnet 
was on the head of Mr. F.’s Aunt, and 
that the second bonnet was on the head 
of Flora, who seemed to have propelled 
her legacy up the steep ascent with 
considerable difficulty. 

Though not altogether enraptured at 
the sight of these visitors, Clennam 
lost no time in opening the counting- 
house door, and extricating them from 
the workshop ; a rescue which was ren- 
dered the more necessary by Mr. F.’s 
Aunt already stumbling over some im- 
pediment, and menacing steam-power 
as an Institution with a stony reticule 
she carried. 

“ Good gracious, Arthur, — I should 
say Mr. Clennam, far more proper, — 
the climb we have had to get up here 
and how ever to get down again with- 
out a fire-escape and Mr. F.’s Aunt 
slipping through the steps and bruised 
all over and you in the machinery and 
foundry way too only think, and never 
told us ! ” 

Thus Flora, out of breath. Mean- 
while, Mr. F.’s Aunt rubbed her es- 
teemed insteps with her umbrella, and 
vindictively glared. 

“ Most unkind never to have come 
back to see us since that day, though 
naturally it was not to be expected that 
there should be any attraction at our 
house and you were much more pleas- 
antly engaged, that ’s pretty certain, 
and is she fair or dark blue eyes or 
black I wonder, not that I expect that 
she should be anything but a perfect 
contrast to me in all particulars for I 
am a disappointment as I very well 
know and you are quite right to be 
devoted no doubt though what I am 
saying Arthur never mind I hardly 
know myself Good gracious ! ” 

By this time he had placed chairs 
for them in the counting-house. As 
Flora dropped into hers, she bestowed 
the old look upon him. 

“And to think of Doyce and Clen- 


nam, and who Doyce can be,” said 
Flora; “delightful man no doubt and 
married perhaps or perhaps a daughter, 
now has he really? then one under- 
stands the partnership and sees it all, 
don’t tell me anything about it for I 
know I have no claim to ask the ques- 
tion the golden chain that once was 
forged, being snapped and very proper.” 

Flora put her hand tenderly on his, 
and gave him another of the youthful 
glances. 

“Dear Arthur — force of habit, Mr. 
Clennam every way more delicate and 
adapted to existing circumstances — I 
must beg to be excused for taking the 
liberty of this intrusion but I thought I 
might so far presume upon old times 
forever faded nevermore to bloom as to 
call with Mr. F.’s Aunt to congratulate 
and offer best wishes. A great deal 
superior to China not to be denied and 
much nearer though higher up ! ” 

“ I am very happy to see you,” said 
Clennam, “ and I thank you. Flora, very 
much for your kind remembrance.” 

“ More than I can say myself at 
any rate,” returned Flora, “ for I might 
have been dead and buried twenty dis- 
tinct times over and no doubt whatever 
should have been before you had gen- 
uinely remembered Me or anything like 
it in spite of which one last remark I 
wish to make, one last explanation I wish 
to offer — ” 

“ My dear Mrs. Finching,” Arthur 
remonstrated in alarm. 

“ O not that disagreeable name, say 
Flora ! ” 

“ Flora, is it worth troubling yourself 
afresh to enter into explanations ?. I as- 
sure you none are needed. I am satis- 
fied, — I am perfectly satisfied.” 

A diversion was occasioned here by 
Mr. F.’s Aunt making the following in- 
exorable and awful statement, — 

“ There ’s milestones on the Dover 
road ! ” 

With such mortal hostility towards 
the human race did she discharge this 
missile, that Clennam was quite at a 
loss how to defend himself ; the rather 
.as he had' been already perplexed in his 
mind by the honor of a visit from this 
venerable lady, when it was plain she 
held him in the utmost abhorrence. 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


156 

He could not but look at her with dis- 
concertment, as she sat breathing bit- 
terness and scorn, and staring leagues 
away. Flora, however, received the 
remark as if it had been of a most ap- 
posite and agreeable nature ; approv- 
ingly observing aloud that Mr. F.’s 
Aunt had a great deal of spirit Stimu- 
lated either by this compliment, or by 
her burning indignation, that illustrious 
woman then added, “ Let him meet it 
if he can ! ” And, with a rigid move- 
ment of her stony reticule (an appen- 
dage of great size, and of a fossil appear- 
ance), indicated that Clennam was the 
unfortunate person at whom the chal- 
lenge was hurled. 

“ One last remark,” resumed Flora, 
“ I was going to say I wish to make one 
last explanation I wish to offer, Mr. 
F.’s Aunt and myself would not have 
intruded on business hours Mr. F. 
having been in business and though 
the wine trade still business is equally 
business call it what you will and busi- 
ness habits are just the same as witness 
Mr. F. himself who had his slippers 
always on the mat at ten minutes before 
six in the afternoon and his boots in- 
side the fender at ten minutes before 
eight in the morning to the moment in 
all weathers light or dark — would not 
therefore have intruded without a mo- 
tive which being kindly meant it may 
be hoped will be kindly taken Arthur, 
Mr. Clennam far more proper, even 
Doyce and Clennam probably more 
business-like.” 

“ Pray say nothing in the way of 
apology,” Arthur entreated. “You are 
always welcome.” 

“Very polite of you to say so Ar- 
thur — cannot remember Mr. Clennam 
until the word is out, such is the habit 
of times forever fled, and so true it is 
that oft in the stilly night ere slumber’s 
chain has bound people, fond memory 
brings the light of other days around 
people — very polite but more polite 
than true I am afraid, for to go into the 
machinery business without so much as 
sending a line or a card to papa — I 
don’t say me though there was a time 
but that is past and stern reality has 
now my gracious never mind — does 
not look like it you must confess.” 


Even Flora’s commas seemed to have 
fled on this occasion ; she was so much 
more disjointed and voluble than in the 
preceding interview. 

“Though indeed,” she hurried on, 
“ nothing else is to be expected and 
why should it be expected, and if it ’s 
not to be expected why should it be, 
and I am far from blaming you or any one, 
When your mamma and my papa wor- 
ried us to death and severed the golden 
bow'l — I mean bond but I dare say you 
know what I mean and if you don’t 
you don’t lose much and care just as lit- 
tle I will venture to add — when they 
severed the golden bond that bound us 
and threw us into fits of crying on 
the sofa nearly choked at least myself 
everything w-as changed and in giving 
my hand to Mr. F. I know' I did so w'ith 
my eyes open but he was so very un- 
settled and in such low spirits that he 
had distractedly alluded to the river if 
not oil of something from the chemist’s 
and I did it for the best.” 

“ My good Flora, we settled that be- 
fore. It w'as all quite right.” 

“ Is ’s perfectly clear you think so,” 
returned Flora, “ for you take it very 
coolly, if I had n’t known it to be China 
I should have guessed myself the Polar 
regions, dear Mr. Clennam you are 
right however and I cannot blame you 
but as to Doyce and Clennam papa’s 
property being about here we heard it 
from Pancks and but for him we never 
should have heard one word about it I 
am satisfied.” 

“No, no, don’t say that.” 

“ What nonsense not to say it Arthur 
— Doyce and Clennam — easier and less 
trying to me than Mr. Clennam — w-hen 
I know it and you know' it too and can’t 
deny it.” 

“ But I do deny it, Flora. I should 
soon have made you a friendly visit.” 

“Ah !” said Flora, tossing her head. 

“ I dare say ! ” and she gave him an- 
other of the old looks. “ However 
when Pancks told us I made up my 
mind that Mr. F.’s Aunt and I would 
come and call because when papa — 
which was before that — happened to 
mention her name to me and to say 
that you w r ere interested in her I said at 
the moment Good gracious why not 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


i57 


have her here then when there ’s any- 
thing to do instead of putting it out.” 

“ When you say Her,” observed 
Clennam, by this time pretty well be- 
wildered, “do you mean Mr. F.’s — ” 

“ My goodness, Arthur — Doyce and 
Clennam really easier to me with old 
remembrances — who ever heard of Mr. 
F.’s Aunt doing needle- work and going 
out by the day ! ” 

“ Going out by the day 1 Do you 
speak of Little Dorrit ? ” 

“ Why yes of course,” returned Flora ! 
“and of all the strangest names I ever 
heard the strangest, like a place down in 
the country with a turnpike, or a favor- 
ite pony or a puppy or a bird, or some- 
thing from a seed-shop to be put in a 
garden or a flower-pot and come up 
speckled.” 

“ Then,- Flora,” said Arthur, with a 
sudden interest in the conversation, 
“ Mr. Casby was so kind as to mention 
Little Dorrit to you, was he? What 
did he say?” 

“ O you know what papa is,” rejoined 
Flora, “ and how aggravatingly he sits 
looking beautiful and turning his thumbs 
over and over one another till lie makes 
one giddy if one keeps one’s eyes upon 
him, he said when we were talking of 
you — I don’t know who began the sub- 
ject Arthur (Doyce and Clennam) but I 
am sure it was n’t me, at least I hope 
not but you really must excuse my con- 
fessing more on that point.” 

“ Certainly,” said Arthur. “ By all 
means.” 

“ You are very ready,” pouted Flora, 
coming to a sudden stop in a captivat- 
ing bashfulness, “ that I must admit, 
Papa said you had spoken of her in an 
earnest way, and I said what I have 
told you and that ’s all.” 

“That’s all?” said Arthur, a little 
disappointed. 

“ Except that when Pancks told us of 
your having embarked in this business 
and with difficulty persuaded us that 
it was really you I said to Mr. F.’s Aunt 
then we would come and ask you if it 
would be agreeable to all parties that 
she should be engaged at our house 
when required for I know she often 
goes to your mamma’s and I know that 
your mamma has a very touchy temper 


Arthur — Doyce and Clennam — or I 
never might have married Mr. F. and 
might have been at this hour but I am 
running into nonsense.” 

“It was very kind of you, Flora, to 
think of this.” 

Poor Flora rejoined with a plain sin- 
cerity which became her better than 
her youngest glances, that she was glad 
he thought so. She said it with so 
much heart, that Clennam would have 
given a great deal to buy his old charac- 
ter of her on the spot, and throw it and 
the mermaid away forever. 

“I think, Flora,” he said, “that the 
employment you can give Little Dorrit, 
and the kindness you can show her — ” 

“ Yes and I will,” said Flora, quickly. 

“ I am sure of it — will be a great as- 
sistance and support to her. I do not 
feel that I have the right to tell you 
what I know of her, for I acquired the 
knowledge confidentially, and under 
circumstances that bind me to silence. 
But I have an interest in the little crea- 
ture, and a respect for her that I cannot 
express to you. Her life has been one 
of such trial and devotion, and such 
quiet goodness, as you can scarcely im- 
agine. I can hardly think of her, far 
less speak of her, without feeling moved. 
Let that feeling represent what I could 
tell you, and commit her to your friend- 
liness with my thanks. 

Once more he put out his hand frank- 
ly to poor Flora ; once more poor Flora 
could n’t accept it frankly, found it 
worth nothing openly, must make the 
old intrigue and mystery of it. As 
much to her own enjoyment as to his 
dismay, she covered it with a corner of 
her shawl as she took it. Then looking 
towards the glass front of the counting- 
house, and seeing two figures approach- 
ing, she cried with infinite relish, “ Pa- 
pa ! Hush, Arthur, for Mercy’s sake ! ” 
and tottered back to her chair with an 
amazing imitation of being in danger of 
swooning, in the dread surprise and 
maidenly flutter of her spirits. 

The Patriarch meanwhile came inane- 
ly beaming towards the counting-house, 
in the wake of Pancks. Pancks opened 
the door for him, towed him in, and re- 
tired to his own moorings in a corner. 

“ I heard from Flora,” said the Patri- 


i 5 8 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


arch, with his benevolent smile, “that | 
she was coming to call, 'coming to call. 
And being out, I thought I ’d come 
also, thought I ’d come also.” 

The benign wisdom he infused into 
this declaration (not of itself profound), 
by means of his blue eyes, his shining 
head, and his long white hair, was most 
impressive. It seemed worth putting 
down among the noblest sentiments 
enunciated by the best of men. Also, 
when he said to Clennam, seating him- 
self in the proffered chair, “And you 
are in a new business, Mr. Clennam? 

I wish you well, sir, I wish you well ! ” 
he seemed to have done benevolent 
wonders. 

“ Mrs. Finching has been telling me, 
sir,” said Arthur, after making his ac- 
knowledgments ; the relict of the late 
Mr. F. meanwhile protesting, with a 
gesture, against his use of that respect- 
able name ; “ that she hopes occasion- 
ally to employ the young needlewoman 
you recommended to my mother. For 
which I have been thanking her. ” 

The Patriarch turning his head in a 
lumbering way towards Pancks, that as- 
sistant put up the note-book in which he 
had been absorbed, and took him in tow. 

“You didn’t recommend her, you 
know,” said Pancks ; “ how could you ? 
You knew nothing about her, you 
did n’t. The name was mentioned to 
you, and you passed it on. That ’s 
what you did.” 

“Well!” said Clennam. “As she 
justifies any recommendation, it is much 
the same thing.” 

“You are glad she turns out well,” 
said Pancks, “ but it would n’t have 
been your fault if she had turned out 
ill. Th^ credit ’s not yours as it is, and 
' the blame would n’t have been yours as 
it might have been. You gave no guar- 
anty. You knew nothing about her.” 

“ You are not acquainted, then,” said 
Arthur, hazarding a random question, 
“with any of her family?” 

“ Acquainted with any of her fam- 
ily?” returned Pancks. “ How should 
you be acquainted with any of her fam- 
ily? You never heard of ’em. You 
can’t be acquainted with people you 
never heard of, can you? You should 
think not ! ” 


All this time the Patriarch sat serene- 
ly smiling ; nodding or shaking his head 
benevolently, as the case required. 

“As to being a reference,” said 
Pancks, “you know, in a general way, 
what being a reference means. It ’s all 
your eye, that is ! Look at your tenants 
down the Yard here. They ’d all be 
references for one another, if you ’d let 
’em. What would be the good of let- 
ting ’em ? It ’s no satisfaction to be 
done by two men instead of one. One ’s 
enough. A person who can’t pay gets 
another person who can’t pay to guar- 
antee that he can pay. Like a person 
with two wooden legs, getting another 
person with two w'ooden legs to guar- 
antee that he has got two natural legs. 
It don’t make either of them able to 
do a walking-match. And four wooden 
legs are more troublesome to you than 
two, when you don’t want any.” Mr. 
Pancks concluded by blowing off that 
steam of his. . 

A momentary silence that ensued was 
broken by Mr. F.’s Aunt, who had been 
sitting upright in a cataleptic state since 
her last public remark. She now un- 
derwent a violent twitch, calculated to 
produce a startling effect on the nerves 
of the uninitiated, and with the deadli- 
est animosity observed, — 

“You can’t make a head and brains 
out of a brass knob with nothing in it. 
You couldn’t do it when your Uncle 
George w’as living; much less when 
he ’s dead.” 

Mr. Pancks was not^slow to reply, 
with his usual calmness, “ Indeed, 
ma’am ! Bless my soul ! I ’m sur- 
prised to hear it.” Despite his pres- 
ence of mind, however, the speech of 
Mr. F.’s Aunt produced a depressing 
effect on the little assembly ; firstly, 
because it w^as impossible to disguise 
that Clennam’s unoffending head was 
the particular temple of reason depre- 
ciated ; and secondly, because nobody 
ever knew on these occasions whose 
Unde George was referred to, or what 
spectral presence might be invoked un- 
der that appellation. 

Therefore Flora said, though still not 
without a certain boastfulness and tri- 
umph in her legacy, that Mr. F.’s Aunt 
was “ very lively to-day, and she thought 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


»59 


they had better go.” But Mr. F.’s 
Aunt proved so lively as to take the 
suggestion in unexpected dudgeon and 
declare that she would not go ; adding, 
with several injurious expressions, that 
if “ He ” — too evidently meaning Clen- 
11am — wanted to get rid of her, “let 
him chuck her out of winder ” ; and 
urgently expressing her desire to see 
“ Him ” perform that ceremony. 

In this dilemma, Mr. Pancks, whose 
resources appeared equal to any emer- 
gency in the Patriarchal waters, slipped 
on his hat, slipped out at the counting- 
house door, and slipped in again a mo- 
ment afterwards with an artificial fresh- 
ness upon him, as if he had been in the 
country for some weeks. “ Why, bless 
my heart, ma’am ! ” said Mr. Pancks, 
rubbing up his hair in great astonish- 
ment, “ is that you ? How do you do, 
ma’am? You are looking charming to- 
day ! I am delighted to see you. Fa- 
vor me with your arm, ma’am ; we ’ll 
have a little walk together, you and me, 
if you ’ll honor me with your company.” 
And so escorted Mr. F.’s Aunt down 
the private staircase of the counting- 
house, with great gallantry and success. 
The patriarchal Mr. Casby then rose 
with the air of having done it himself, 
and blandly followed; leaving his daugh- 
ter, as she followed in her turn, to re- 
mark to her former lover in a distracted 
whisper (which she very much enjoyed), 
that they had drained the cup of life to 
the dregs ; and further to hint mysteri- 
ously that the late Mr. F. was at the 
bottom of it. _ 

Alone again, Clennam became a 
prey to his old doubts in reference to his 
mother and Little Dorrit, and revolved 
the old thoughts and suspicions. They 
were all in his mind, blending them- 
selves with the duties he was mechani- 
cally discharging, when a shadow on his 
papers caused him to look up for the 
cause. The cause was Mr. Pancks. 
With his hat thrown back upon his ears 
as if his wiry prongs of hair had darted 
up like springs and cast it off, with his 
jet-black beads of eyes inquisitively 
sharp, with the fingers of his right hand 
in his mouth that he might bite the 
nails, and with the fingers of his left 
hand in reserve in his pocket for another 


course, Mr. Pancks cast his shadow 
through the glass upon the books and 
papers. 

Mr. Pancks asked, with a little in- 
quiring twist of his head, if he might 
come in again ? Clennam replied with 
a nod of his head in the affirmative. 
Mr. Pancks worked his way in, came 
alongside the desk, made himself fast by 
leaning his arms upon it, and started 
conversation wfith a puff and a snort. 

“ Mr. F.’s Aunt is appeased, I hope ? ” 
said Clennam. 

“All right, sir,” said Pancks. 

“ I am so unfortunate as to have 
awakened a strong animosity in the 
breast of that lady,” said Clennam. 
“ Do you know why? ” 

“ Does she know why ? ” said Pancks. 

“ I suppose not.” 

“/suppose not,” said Pancks. 

He took out his note-book, opened it, 
shut it, dropped it into his hat, which 
was beside him on the desk, and looked 
in at it as it lay at the bottom of the 
hat : all with a great appearance of con- 
sideration. 

“ Mr! Clennam,” he then began, “ I 
am in want of information, sir.” 

“Connected with this firm?” asked 
Clennam. 

“No,” said Pancks. 

“ With what then, Mr. Pancks ? 
That is to say, assuming that you want 
it of me.” 

“Yes, sir; yes, I want it of you,” 
said Pancks, “ if I can persuade you to 
furnish it. A, B, C, D. DA, DE, DI, 
DO. Dictionary order. Dorrit. That ’s 
the name, sir.” 

Mr. Pancks blew off his peculiar noise 
again, and fell to at his right-hand nails. 
Arthur looked searchingly at him ; he 
returned the look. 

“ I don’t understand you, Mr. 
Pancks.” 

“That’s the name that I want to 
know about.” 

“ And what do you want to know ? ” 

“ Whatever you can and will tell me.” 
This comprehensive summary of his de- 
sires was not discharged without some 
heavy laboring on the part of Mr. 
Pancks’s machinery. 

“ This is a singular visit, Mr. Pancks. 
It strikes me as rather extraordinary 


i6o 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


that you should come, with such an ob- 
ject, to me.” 

“ It may be all extraordinary togeth- 
er,” returned Pancks. “ It maybe out 
of the ordinary course, and yet be busi- 
ness. In short, it is business. I am a 
man of business. What business have 
I in this present world, except to stick 
to business? No business.” 

With his former doubt whether this 
dry hard personage were quite in ear- 
nest^ Clennam again turned his eyes at- 
tentively upon his face. It was as 
scrubby and dingy as ever, and as eager 
and quick as ever, and he could see 
nothing lurking in it that was at all ex- 
pressive of a latent mockery that had 
seemed to strike upon his ear in the 
voice. 

“ Now,” said Pancks, “ to put this 
business on its own footing, it ’s not my 
proprietor’s.” 

“Do you refer to Mr. Casby as your 
proprietor? ” 

Pancks nodded. “ My proprietor. 
Put a case. Say, at my proprietor’s I 
hear name, — name of young person Mr. 
Clennam wants to serve. Say? name 
first mentioned to my proprietor by 
Plornish in the Yard. Say, I go to 
Plornish. Say, I ask Plornish, as a 
matter of business, for information. Say, 
Plornish, though six weeks in arrear to 
my proprietor, declines. Say, Mrs. 
Plornish declines. Say, both refer to 
Mr. Clennam. Put the case.” 

“ Well?” 

“Well, sir,” returned Pancks, “say, 
I come to him. Say, here I am.” 

With those prongs of hair sticking 
up all over his head, and his breath 
coming and going very hard and short, 
the busy Pancks fell back a step (in 
Tug metaphor, took half a turn astern) 
as if to show his dingy hull complete, 
then forged ahead again, and directed 
his quick glance by turns into his hat 
where his note-book was, and into Clen- 
nam’s face. 

“ Mr. Pancks, not to trespass on 
your ground of mystery, I wiy be as 
plain with you as I can. Let me ask 
two questions. First — ” 

“ All right ! ” said Pancks, holding up 
his dirty forefinger with its broken nail. 
“ I see 1 * What ’s your motive ? ’ ” 


“ Exactly.” 

“ Motive,” said Pancks, “ good. 
Nothing to do with my proprietor ; not 
statable at present, ridiculous to state 
at present ; but good. Desiring to 
serve young person, name of Dorrit,” 
said Pancks, with his forefinger still up 
as a caution. “ Better admit motive to 
be good.” 

“ Secondly, and lastly, what do you 
want to know?” 

Mr. Pancks fished up his note-book 
before the question was put, and but- 
toning it with care in an inner breast- 
pocket, and looking straight at Clen- 
nam all the time, replied with a pause 
and a puff, “ I want supplementary in- 
formation of any sort.” 

Clennam could not withhold a smile, 
as the panting little steam-tug, so use- 
ful to that unwieldy ship the Casby, 
waited on and watched him as if it w ere 
seeking an opportunity of running in 
and rifling him of all it wanted, before 
he could resist its manoeuvres ; though 
there was that in Mr. Pancks’s eager- 
ness, too, which awakened many won- 
dering speculations in his mind. After 
a little consideration, he resolved to 
supply Mr. Pancks with such leading 
% information as it was in his power to 
impart to him; well knowing that Mr. 
Pancks, if he failed in his present re- 
search, was pretty sure to find other 
means of getting it. 

He, therefore, first requesting Mr. 
Pancks to remember his voluntary dec- 
laration that his proprietor had no part 
in the disclosure, and that his own in- 
tentions were good (two declarations 
which that coaly little gentleman with 
the greatest ardor repeated), openly 
told him that as to the Dorrit lineage 
or former place of habitation he had no 
information to communicate, and that 
his knowledge of the family did not ex- 
tend beyond the fact that it appeared 
to be now reduced to five members ; 
namely, to two brothers, of whom one 
w r as single, and one a widower with 
three children. The ages of the whole 
family he made knowm to Mr. Pancks, 
as nearly as he could guess at them ; 
and finally he described to him the po- 
sition of the Father of the Marshalsea, 
and the course of time and events 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


through which he had become invested 
with that character. To all this, Mr. 
Pancks, snorting and blowing in a more 
and more portentous manner as he be- 
came more interested,- listened with 
great attention ; appearing to derive 
the most agreeable sensations from the 
painfullest parts of the narrative, and 
particularly to be quite charmed by the 
account of William Dorrit’s long im- 
prisonment. 

“ In conclusion, Mr. Pancks,” said 
Arthur, “ I have but to say this. I 
have reasons beyond a personal regard 
for speaking as little as I can of the 
Dorrit family, particularly at my moth- 
er’s house” (Mr. Pancks nodded), “and 
for knowing as much as I can. So de- 
voted a man of business as you are — 
eh? ” 

For, Mr. Pancks had suddenly made 
that blowing effort with unusual force. 

“ It ’s nothing,” said Pancks. 

“ So devoted a man of business as 
yourself has a perfect understanding of 
a fair bargain. I wish to make a fair 
bargain with you, that you shall en- 
lighten me concerning the Dorrit family 
when you have it in your power, as I 
have enlightened you. It may not give 
you a very flattering idea of my business * 
habits, that I failed to make my terms 
beforehand,” continued Clennam ; “ but 
I prefer to make them a point of honor. 

I have seen so much business done on 
sharp principles that, to tell you the 
truth, Mr. Pancks, I am tired of them.” 

Mr. Pancks laughed. “ It ’s a bar- 
gain, sir,” said he. “You shall find 
me stick to it.” 

After that, he stood a little while 
looking at Clennam, and biting his ten 
nails all round ; evidently while he 
fixed in his mind what he had been told, 
and went over it carefully before the 
means of supplying a gap in his mem- 
ory should be no longer at hand. “ It ’s 
all right,” he said at last, “and now 
I ’ll wish you good day, as it ’s collect- 
ing-day in the Yard. By the by, though. 

A lame foreigner with a stick.” 

“Ay, ay. You do take a reference 
sometimes, I see?” said Clennam. 

“ When he can pay, sir,” replied 
Pancks “ Take all you can get, and 
keep back all you can’t be forced to 


161 

give up. That ’s business. The lame 
foreigner with the stick wants a top 
room down the Yard. Is he good for 
it?” 

“ I am,” said Clennam, “ and I will 
answer for him.” 

“ That ’s enough. What I must 
have of Bleeding Heart Yard,” said 
Pancks, making a note of the case in his 
book, “ is my bond. I want my bond, 
you see. Pay up, or produce your 
property ! That ’s the watchword d<$wn 
the Yard. The lame foreigner with the 
stick represented that you sent him ; 
but he could represent (as far as that 
goes) that the Great Mogul sent him. 
He has been in the Hospital, I be- 
lieve ? ” 

“Yes. Through having met with 
an accident. He is only just now dis- 
charged.” 

“ It ’s pauperizing a man, sir, I have 
been shown, to let him into a Hospi- 
tal?” said Pancks. And again blew 
off that remarkable sound. 

“ I have been shown so too,” said 
Clennam, coldly. _ 

Mr. Pancks, being by that time quite 
ready for a start, got under steam in a 
moment, and, without any other signal 
or ceremony, was snorting down the 
step-ladder and working into Bleeding 
Heart Yard, before he seemed to be 
well out of the counting-house. 

Throughout the remainder of the 
day, Bleeding Heart Yard was in con- 
sternation, as the grim Pancks cruised 
in it : haranguing the inhabitants on 
their backslidings in respect of pay- 
ment, demanding his bond, breathing 
notices to quit and executions, running 
down defaulters, sending a swell of ter- 
ror on before him, and leaving it in his 
wake. Knots of people, impelled by a 
fatal attraction, lurked outside any 
house in which he was known to be, 
listening for fragments of his discourses 
to the inmates ; and, when he was ru- 
mored to be coming down the stairs, 
often could not disperse so quickly but 
that he yvould be prematurely in among 
them, demanding their own arrears, 
and rooting them to the spot. Through- 
out the remainder of the day, Mr. 
Pancks’s What were they up to ? and 
What did they mean by it? sounded 


ii 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


162 

all over the Yard. Mr. Pancks would 
n’t hear of excuses, wouldn’t hear of 
complaints, would n’t hear of repairs, 
wouldn’t hear of anything but uncon- 
ditional money down. Perspiring and 
puffing and darting about in eccentric 
directions, and becoming hotter and 
dingier every moment, he lashed the 
tide of the Yard into a most agitated 
and turbid state. It had not settled 
down into calm water again, full two 
hours after he had been seen fuming away 
on the horizon at the top of the steps. 

There were several small assemblages 
of the Bleeding Hearts at the popular 
points of meeting in the Yard that 
night, among whom it was universally 
agreed that Mr. Pancks was a hard 
man to have to do with ; and that it 
was much to be regretted, so it was, 
that a gentleman like Mr. Casby should 
put his rents in his hands, and never 
know him in his true light. For (said 
the Bleeding Hearts), if a gentleman 
with that head of hair and them eyes 
took his rents into his own hands, 
ma’am, there would be none of this 
worriting and wearing, and things 
would be very different. 

At which identical evening hour and 
minute, the Patriarch, — who had float- 
ed serenely through the Yard in the 
forenoon before the harrying began, 
with the express design of getting up 
this trustfulness in his shining bumps 
and silken locks, — at which identical 
hour and minute, that first-rate hum- 
bug of a thousand guns was heavily 
floundering in the little Dock of his ex- 
hausted Tug at home, and was saying, 
as he turned his thumbs, — 

“ A very bad day’s work, Pancks, 
very bad day’s work. It seems to me, 
sir, and I must insist on making the 
observation forcibly, in justice to myself, 
that you ought to have got much more 
money, much more money.” 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

FORTUNE-TELLING. 

Little Dorrit received a call that 
same evening from Mr. Plornish, who, 


having intimated that he wished to 
speak to her, privately, in a series of 
coughs so very noticeable as to favor 
the idea that her father, as regarded her 
seamstress occupation, was an illustra- 
tion of the axiom that there are no such 
stone-blind men as those who will not 
see, obtained an audience with her on 
the common staircase outside the door. 

“ There ’s been a lady at our place 
to-day, Miss Dorrit,” Plornish growled, 
“ and another one along with her as is 
a old wixen if ever I met with such. 
The way she snapped a person’s head 
off, dear me ! ” 

The mild Plornish was at first quite 
unable to get his mind away from Mr. 
F.’s Aunt. “For,” said he, to excuse 
himself, “ she is, I do assure you, the 
winegariest party ! ” 

At length, by a great effort, he de- 
tached himself from the subject suffi- 
ciently to observe, — 

“ But she ’s neither here nor there 
just at present. The other lady, she ’s 
Mr. Casby’s daughter ; and if Mr. Cas- 
by ain’t well off, none better, it ain’t 
through any fault of Pancks. For, as 
to Pancks, he does, he really does, he 
does indeed ! ” 

. Mr. Plornish, after his usual manner, 
was a little obscure, but conscientiously 
emphatic. 

“ And what she come to our place 
for,” he pursued, “ was to leave word 
that if Miss Dorrit would step up to 
that card, — which it ’s Mr. Casby’s 
house that is, and Pancks he has a 
office at the back, where he really does, 
beyond belief, — she would be glad for 
to engage her. She was a old and a 
dear friend, she said particular, of Mr. 
Clennam, and hoped for to prove her- 
self a useful friend to his friend. Them 
was her words. Wishing to know 
whether Miss Dorrit could come to- 
morrow morning, I said I would see 
you, miss, and inquire, and look round 
there to-night to say yes, or, if you was 
engaged to-morrow, when.” 

“ I can go to-morrow, thank you,” 
said Little Dorrit. “ This is very kind 
of you, but you are always kind.” 

Mr. Plornish, with a modest disavow- 
al of his merits, opened the room door 
for her readmission, and followed her 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


163 


in with such an exceedingly bald pre- 
tence of not having been out at all, that 
her father might have observed it with- 
out being very suspicious. In his affa- 
ble unconsciousness, however, he took 
no heed. Plornish, after a little con- 
versation, in which he blended his for- 
mer duty as a collegian with his present 
privilege as a humble outside friend, 
qualified again by his low estate as a 
plasterer, took his leave ; making the 
tour of the prison before he left, and 
looking on at a game of skittles, with 
the mixed feelings of an old inhabitant 
who had his private reasons for believ- 
ing that it might be his destiny to come 
back again. 

Early in the morning, Little Dorrit, 
leaving Maggy in high domestic trust, 
set off for the Patriarchal tent. She 
went by the Iron Bridge, though it cost 
her a penny, and walked more slowly 
in that part of her journey than in any 
other. At five minutes before eight, 
her hand was on the Patriarchal knock- 
er, which was quite as high as she could 
reach. 

She gave Mrs. Finching’s card to the 
young woman who opened the door, 
and the young woman told her that 
“ Miss Flora ” — Flora having, on her 
return to the parental roof, reinvested 
herself with the title under which she 
had lived there — was not yet out of 
her bedroom, but she was to please to 
walk up into Miss Flora’s sitting-room. 
She walked up into Miss Flora’s sitting- 
room, as in duty bound, and there 
found a breakfast-table comfortably laid 
for two, with a supplementary tray 
upon it laid for one. The young wo- 
man, disappearing for a few moments, 
returned to say that she was to please 
to take a chair by the fire, and to take 
off her bonnet and make herself at 
home. But Little Dorrit being bashful, 
and not used to make herself at home 
on such occasions, felt at a loss how to 
do it ; so she was still sitting near the 
door with her bonnet on, when Flora 
came in in a hurry, half an hour after- 
wards. 

Flora was so sorry to have kept her 
waiting, and good gracious why did she 
sit out there in the cold when she had 
expected to find her by the fire reading 


the paper, and hadn’t that heedless girl 
given her the message then, and had 
she really been in her bonnet all this 
time, and pray for goodness’ sake let 
Flora take it off ! Flora, taking it off 
in the best-natured manner in the world, 
was so struck by the face disclosed, that 
she said, “ Why, what a good little 
thing you are, my dear ! ” and pressed 
the face between her hands like the 
gentlest of women. 

It was the word and the action of a 
moment. Little Dorrit had hardly time 
to think how kind it was, when Flora 
dashed at the breakfast-table, full of 
business, and plunged over head and 
ears into loquacity. 

“ Really so sorry that I should hap- 
pen to be late on this morning of all 
mornings because my intention and my 
wish was to be ready to meet you when 
you came in and to say that any one 
that interested Arthur Clennam half so 
much must interest me and that I gave 
you the heartiest welcome and was so 
glad, instead of which they never called 
me and there I still am snoring I dare 
say if the truth was known and if you 
don’t like either cold fowl or hot boiled 
ham which many people don’t I dare 
say besides Jews and theirs are scruples 
of conscience which we must all respect 
though I must say I wish they had them 
equally strong when they sell us false 
articles for real that certainly ain’t 
worth the money I shall be quite vexed,” 
said Flora. 

Little Dorrit thanked her, and said, 
shyly, bread and butter and tea was all 
she usually — 

“ O nonsense my dear child I can 
never hear of that,” said Flora, turning 
on the urn in the most reckless manner, 
and making herself wink by splashing 
hot water into her eyes as she* bent 
down to look into the teapot. “You 
are come here on the footing of a friend 
and companion you know if you will let 
me take that liberty and I should be 
ashamed of myself indeed if you could 
come here upon any other, besides 
which Arthur Clennam spoke in such 
terms — 5'ou are tired my dear.” 

“ No, ma’am.” 

“You turn so pale you have walked 
too far before breakfast and I dare say 


164 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


live a great way off and ought to have 
had a ride,” said Flora, “dear dear is 
there anything that would do you 
good? ” 

“ Indeed I am quite well, ma’am. I 
thank you again and again, but I am 
quite well.” 

“ Then take your tea at once I beg,” 
said Flora, “and this wing of fowl and 
bit of ham, don’t mind me or wait for 
me because I always carry in this tray 
myself to Mr. F.’s Aunt who breakfasts 
in bed and a charming old lady too and 
very clever, Portrait of Mr. F. behind 
the door and very like though too much 
forehead and as to a pillar with a mar- 
ble pavement and balustrades and a 
mountain I never saw him near it nor 
not likely in the wine trade, excellent 
man but not at all in that way.” 

Little Dorrit glanced at the portrait, 
very imperfectly following the references 
to that work of art. 

“Mr. F. was so devoted to me that he 
never could bear me out of his sight,” 
said Flora, “ though of course I am un- 
able to say how long that might have 
lasted if he had n’t been cut short while 
I was a new broom, worthy man but not 
poetical manly prose but not romance.” 

Little Dorrit glanced at the portrait 
again. The artist had given it a head 
that would have been, in an intellectual 
point of view, top-heavy for Shake- 
speare. 

“ Romance, however,” Flora went on, 
busily arranging Mr. F.’s Aunt’s toast, 
“ as I openly said to Mr. F. when he 
proposed to me and you will be sur- 
prised to hear that he proposed seven 
times once in a hackney-coach once in 
a boat once in a pew once on a donkey 
at Tunbridge Wells and the rest on 
his knees, Romance was fled with the 
early days of Arthur Clennam, our par- 
ents tore us asunder we became marble 
and stern reality usurped the throne, 
Mr. F. said very much to his credit that 
he was perfectly aware of it and even 
preferred that state of things according- 
ly the word was spoken the fiat went 
forth and such is life you see my dear 
and yet we do not break but bend, pray 
make a good breakfast while I go in 
with the tray.” 

She disappeared, leaving Little Dor- 


rit to ponder over the meaning of her 
scattered words. She soon came back 
again ; and at last began to take her 
own breakfast, talking all the while. 

“You see my dear,” said Flora, 
measuring out a spoonful or two of some 
brown liquid that smelt like brandy, 
and putting it into her tea, “ I am 
obliged to be careful to follow the di- 
rections of my medical man though the 
flavor is anything but agreeable being a 
poor creature and it may be have never 
recovered the shock received in youth 
from too much giving way to crying in 
the next room when separated from 
Arthur, have you known him long?” 

As soon as Little Dorrit compre- 
hended that she had been asked this 
question, — for which time was neces- 
sary, the galloping pace of her new pa- 
troness having left her far behind, — she 
answered that she had known Mr. Clen- 
nam ever since his return. 

“ To be sure you could n’t have known 
him before unless you had been in Chi- 
na or had corresponded neither of which 
is likely,” returned Flora, “for travel- 
ling-people usually get more or less 
mahogany and you are not at all so 
and as to corresponding what about? 
that ’s very true unless tea, so it was at 
his mother’s was it really that you knew 
him first, highly sensible and firm but 
dreadfully severe — ought to be the 
mother of the man in the iron mask.” 

“ Mrs. Clennam has been kind to 
me,” said Little Dorrit. 

‘ £ Really ? I am sure I am glad to 
hear it because as Arthur’s mother it ’s 
naturally pleasant to my feelings to have 
a better opinion of her than I had before, 
though what she thinks of me when I 
run on as I am certain to do and she 
sits glowering at me like Fate in a go- 
cart — shocking comparison really — 
invalid and not her fault — I never 
know or can imagine.” 

“ Shall I find my work anywhere, 
ma’am? ’’asked Little Dorrit, looking 
timidly about ; “ can I get it ? ” 

“ You industrious little fairy,” re- 
turned Flora, taking, in another cup of 
tea, another of the doses prescribed by 
her medical man, “ there ’s not the 
slightest hurry and it ’s better that we 
should begin by being confidential 


LITTLE D0RR1T. 


about our mutual friend — too cold a 
word for me at least I don’t mean that, 
very proper expression mutual friend — 
than become through mere formalities 
not you but me like the Spartan boy 
with the fox biting him, which I hope 
you ’ll excuse my bringing up for of all 
the tiresome boys that will go tumbling 
into every sort of company that boy ’s 
the tiresomest.” 

Little Dorrit, her face very pale, sat 
down again to listen. “ Hadn’t I 
better work the while ? ” she asked. 
“ I can work and attend too. I would 
rather if I may.” 

Her earnestness was so expressive of 
her being uneasy without her work, that 
Flora answered, “ Well my dear what- 
ever you like best,” and produced a 
basket of white handkerchiefs. Little 
Dorrit gladly put it by her side, took out 
her little pocket-housewife, threaded 
her needle, and began to hem. 

“What nimble fingers you have,” 
said Flora, “ but are you sure you are 
well?” 

“ O yes indeed ! ” 

Flora put her feet upon the fender, 
and settled herself for a thorough good 
romantic disclosure. She started off at 
score, tossing her head, sighing in the 
most demonstrative manner, making a 
great deal of use of her eyebrows, and 
occasionally, but not often, glancing at 
the quiet face that bent over the work. 

“ You must know my dear,” said 
Flora, “ but that I have no doubt you 
know already not only because I have 
already thrown it out in a general way 
but because I feel I carry it stamped 
in burning what’s-his-names upon my 
brow that before I was introduced to 
the late Mr. F. I had been engaged to 
Arthur Clennam — Mr. Clennam in 
public where reserve is necessary Ar- 
thur here — we were all in all to one an- 
other it was the morning of life it was 
bliss it was frenzy it was everything else 
of that sort in the highest degree, when 
rent asunder we turned to stone in which 
capacity Arthur went to China and I be- 
came the statue bride of the late Mr. F.” 

Flora, uttering these words in a deep 
voice, enjoyed herself immensely. 

“ To paint,” said she, “ the emotions 
of that morning when all was marble 


165 

within and Mr. F.’s Aunt followed in a 
glass coach which it stands to reason 
must have been in shameful repair or it 
never could have broken down two 
streets from the house and Mr. F. ’s Aunt 
brought home like the fifth of November 
in a rush-bottomed chair I will not at- 
tempt, suffice it to say that the hollow 
form of breakfast took place in the din- 
ing-room down stairs that papa partak- 
ing too freely of pickled salmon was ill 
for weeks and that Mr. F. and myself 
went upon a continental tour to Calais 
where the people fought for us on the 
pier until they separated us though not 
forever that was not yet to be.” 

The statue bride, hardly pausing for 
breath, went on, with the greatest 
complacency, in a rambling manner 
sometimes incidental to flesh and 
blood. 

“ I will draw a veil over that dreamy 
life, Mr. F. was in good spirits his ap- 
petite was good he liked the cookery he 
considered the wine weak but palatable 
and all was well, we returned to the 
immediate neighborhood of Number 
Thirty Little Gosling Street London 
Docks and settled down, ere we had 
yet fully detected the housemaid in sell- 
ing the feathers out of the spare bed 
Gout flying upwards soared with Mr. 
F. to another sphere.” 

His relict, with a glance at his por- 
trait, shook her head and wiped her 
eyes. 

“ I revere the memory of Mr. F. as an 
estimable man and most indulgent hus- 
band, only necessary to mention As- 
paragus and it appeared or to hint at 
any little delicate thing to drink and it 
came like magic in a pint bottle it was 
not ecstasy but it was comfort, I re- 
turned to papa’s roof and lived secluded 
if not happy during some years until 
one day papa came smoothly blunder- 
ing in and said that Arthur Clennam 
awaited me below, I went below and 
found him ask me not what I found 
him except that he was still unmarried 
still unchanged ! ” 

The dark mystery with which Flora 
now enshrouded herself might have 
stopped other fingers than the nimble 
fingers that worked near her. They 
worked on, without pause, and the busy 


i66 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


head bent over them watching the 
stitches. 

“ Ask me not,” said Flora, “ if I love 
him still or if he still loves me or what 
the end is to be or when, we are sur- 
rounded by watchful eyes and it may 
be that we are destined to pine asunder 
it may be nevermore to be reunited not 
a word not a breath not a look to betray 
us all must be secret as the tomb won- 
der not therefore that even if I should 
seem comparatively cold to Arthur or 
Arthur should seem comparatively cold 
to me we have fatal reasons it is enough 
if we understand them hush ! ” 

All of which Flora said with so much 
headlong vehemence as if she really 
believed it. There is not much doubt, 
that, when she worked herself into full 
mermaid condition, she did actually 
believe whatever she said in it. 

“ Hush ! ” repeated Flora, “ I have 
now told you all, confidence is estab- 
lished between us hush, for Arthur’s 
sake I will always be a friend to you 
my dear girl and in Arthur’s name you 
may always rely upon me.” 

The nimble fingers laid aside the 
work, and the little figure rose and 
kissed her hand. “You are very cold,” 
said Flora, changing to her own natural 
kind-hearted manner, and gaining great- 
ly by the change. “ Don’t work to-day 
I am sure you are not well I am sure 
you are not strong.” 

“ It is only that I feel a little overcome 
by your kindness, and by Mr. Clen- 
nam’s kindness in confiding me to one 
he has known and loved so long.” 

“Well really my -dear,” said Flora, 
who had a decided tendency to be al- 
ways honest when she gave herself time 
to think about it, “ it ’s as well to leave 
that alone now, for I could n’t undertake 
to say after all, but it does n’t signify lie 
down a little ! ” 

“ I have always been strong enough 
to do w'hat I want to do, and I shall be 
quite well directly,” returned Little 
Dorrit, with a faint smile. “You have 
overpowered me with gratitude, that ’s 
all. If I keep near the window for a 
moment, I shall be quite myself.” 

Flora opened a window 7 , sat her in a 
chair by it, and considerately retired to 
her former place. It was a windy day, 


and the air stirring on Little Dorrit’s 
face soon brightened it. In a very few 
minutes she returned to her basket of 
work, and her nimble fingers were as 
nimble as ever. 

Quietly pursuing her task, she asked 
Flora if Mr. Clennam had told her 
where she lived? When Flora replied 
in the negative, Little Dorrit said that 
she understood why he had been so 
delicate, but that she felt sure he would 
approve of her confiding her secret to 
Flora, and that she would therefore do 
so now with Flora’s permission. Re- 
ceiving an encouraging answer, she 
condensed the narrative of her life into 
a few scanty words about herself, and a 
glowing eufogy upon her father ; and 
Flora took it all in with a natural ten- 
derness that quite understood it, and 
in which there was no incoherence. 

When dinner-time came, Flora drew 
the arm of her new charge through 
hers, and led her down stairs, and pre- 
sented her to the Patriarch and Mr. 
Pancks, who were already in the din- 
ing-room waiting to begin. (Mr. F.’s 
Aunt was, for the time, laid up in ordi- 
nary in her chamber.) By those gen- 
tlemen she w 7 as received according to 
their characters ; the Patriarch appear- 
ing to do her some inestimable service 
in saying that he was glad to see her, 
glad to see her ; and Mr. Pancks blow- 
ing off his favorite sound as a sa- 
lute. 

In that new presence she would have 
been bashful enough under any circum- 
stances, and particularly under Flora’s 
insisting on her drinking a glass of wine 
and eating of the best that was there ; 
but her constraint was greatly increased 
by Mr. Pancks. The demeanor of that 
gentleman at first suggested to her mind 
that he might be a taker of likenesses, 
so intently did he look at her, and so 
frequently did he glance at the little 
note-book by his side. Observing that 
he made no sketch, however, and that 
he talked about business only, she began 
to have suspicions that he represented 
some creditor of her father’s, the bal- 
ance due to whom was noted in that 
pocket volume. Regarded from this 
point of view, Mr. Pancks^s puffings 
expressed injury and impatience, and 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


167 


each of his louder snorts became a de- 
mand for payment. 

But here again she was^imdeceived 
by anomalous and incongruous conduct 
on the part of Mr. Pancks himself. She 
had left the table half an hour, and was 
at work alone. Flora had “ gone to lie 
down ” in the next room, concurrently 
with which retirement a smell of some- 
thing to drink had broken out in the 
house. The Patriarch was fast asleep, 
with his philanthropic mouth open, un- 
der a yellow pocket-handkerchief in the 
dining-room. At this quiet time, Mr. 
Pancks softly appeared before her, ur- 
banely nodding. 

“ Find it a little dull, Miss Dorrit?” 
inquired Pancks, in a low voice. 

“No, thank you, sir,” said Little 
Dorrit. 

“ Busy, I see,” observed Mr. Pancks, 
stealing into the room by inches. 
“ What are those now, Miss Dorrit ? ” 

“ Handkerchiefs.” 

“ Are they, though ! ” said Pancks. 
“I shouldn’t have thought it.” Not 
in the least looking at them, but look- 
ing at Little Dorrit. “ Perhaps you 
wonder who I am. Shall I tell you? I 
am a fortune-teller.” 

Little Dorrit now began to think he 
was mad. 

“ I belong body and soul to my pro- 
prietor,” said Pancks; “you saw my 
proprietor having his dinner below. 
But I do a little in the other way, some- 
times ; privately, very privately, Miss 
Dorrit.” 

Little Dorrit looked at him doubt- 
fully, and not without alarm. “ I wish 
you ’d show me the palm of your hand,” 
said Pancks. “ I should like to have a 
look at it. Don’t let me be troublesome.” 

He was so far troublesome that he 
was not at all wanted there ; but she 
laid her work in her lap for a moment, 
and held out her left hand with the 
thimble on it. 

“Years of toil, eh?” said Pancks, 
softly, touching it with his blunt fore- 
finger. “ But what else are we made 
for? Nothing. Hallo!” looking into 
the lines. “ What ’s this with bars ? 
It ’s a college ! And what ’s this with 
a gray gown and a black velvet cap? 
It ’s a father ! And what ’s this with a 


clarionet ? It ’s an uncle ! And what ’s 
this in dancing-shoes ? It’s a sister ! 
And what ’s this straggling about in an 
idle sort of a way ? It’s a brother ! 
And what’s this thinking for ’em all? 
Why, this is you, Miss Dorrit ! ” 

Her eyes met his as she looked up 
wonderingly into his face, and she 
thought that, although his were sharp 
eyes, he was a brighter and gentler- 
looking man than she had supposed at 
dinner. His eyes were on her hand 
again directly, and her opportunity of 
confirming or correcting the impression 
was gone. 

“ Now, the deuce is in it,” muttered 
Pancks, tracing out a line in her hand 
with his clumsy finger, “if this isn’t 
me in the corner here ! What do I 
want here? What’s behind me?” 

He carried his finger slowly down to 
the wrist, and round the wrist, and af- 
fected to look at the back of the hand 
for what was behind him. 

“ Is it any harm? ” asked Little Dor- 
rit, smiling. _ • 

“ Deuce a bit ! ” said Pancks. 
“ What do you think it ’s worth ? ” 

“ I ought to ask you that. I am not 
the fortune-teller.” 

“ True,” said Pancks. “ What ’s it 
worth? You shall live to see, Miss 
Dorrit.” 

Releasing the hand by slow degrees, 
he drew all his fingers through his 
prongs of hair, so that they stood up in 
their most portentous manner ; and re- 
peated slowly, “ Remember what I say, 
Miss Dorrit. You shall live to see.” 

She could not help showing that she 
was much surprised, if it were only by 
his knowing so much about her. 

“ Ah ! That ’s it ! ” said Pancks, 
pointing at her. “ Miss Dorrit, not 
that, ever ! ” 

More surprised than before, and a 
little more frightened, she looked to him 
for an explanation of his last words. 

“ Not that,” said Pancks,. making, 
with great seriousness, an imitation of 
a surprised look and manner, that ap- 
peared to be unintentionally grotesque. 
“ Don’t do that. Never on seeing me, 
no matter when, no matter where. I 
am nobody. Don’t take on to mind 
me. Don’t mention me. Take no 


1 68 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


notice. Will you agree, Miss Dor- 
rit ? ” 

“ I hardly know what to say,” re- 
turned Little Dorrit, quite astounded. 
“Why?” 

“ Because I am a fortune-teller. 
Pancks the gypsy. I have n ’t told you so 
much of your fortune yet, Miss Dorrit, 
as to tell you what ’s behind me on that 
little hand. I have told you you shall 
live to see. Is it agreed, Miss Dorrit? ” 

“ Agreed that I — am — to — ” 

“To take no notice of me away from 
here, unless I take on first. Not to 
mind me when I come and go. It ’s 
very easy. I am no loss, I am not hand- 
some, I am not good company, I am 
only my proprietor’s grubber. You need 
do no more than think, ‘ Ah ! Pancks 
the gypsy at his fortune-telling — he ’ll 
tell the rest of my fortune one day — I 
shall live to know it.’ Is it agreed, 
Miss Dorrit?” 

“ Ye-es,” faltered Little Dorrit, whom 
he greatly confused, “ I suppose so, 
while you do no barm.” 

“Good! - ” Mr. Pancks glanced at 
the wall of the adjoining room, and 
stooped forward. “ Honest creature, 
woman of capital points, but heedless 
and a loose talker, Miss Dorrit.” With 
that he rubbed his hands as if the inter- 
view had been very satisfactory to him, 
panted away to the door, and urbanely 
nodded himself out again. 

If Little Dorrit were beyond measure 
perplexed by this curious conduct on the 
part of her new acquaintance, and by 
finding herself involved in this singular 
treaty, her perplexity was not dimin- 
ished by ensuing circumstances. Be- 
sides that Mr. Pancks took every oppor- 
tunity afforded him in Mr. Casby’s 
house of significantly glancing at her 
and snorting at her, — which was not 
much, after what he had done already, 
— he began to pervade her daily life. 
She saw him in the street, constantly. 
When she went to Mr. Casby’s, he was 
always there. When she went to Mrs. 
Clennam’s, he came there on any pre- 
tence, as if to keep her in his sight. A 
week had not gone by, when she found 
him, to her astonishment, in the lodge 
one night, conversing with the turnkey 
on duty and to all appearance one of his 


familiar companions. Her next sur- 
prise was tafind him equally at his ease 
within the||}rison ; to hear of his pre- 
senting himself among the visitors at 
her father’s Sunday levee ; to see him 
arm in arm with a collegiate friend 
about the yard; to learn, from Fame, 
that he had greatly distinguished him- 
self one evening at the social club that 
held its meetings in the Snuggery by 
addressing a speech to the members of 
that institution, singing a song, and 
treating the company to five gallons of 
ale, — report madly added a bushel of 
shrimps. The effect on Mr. Plomish 
of such of these phenomena as he be- 
came an eyewitness of, in his faithful 
visits, made an impression on Little 
Dorrit only second to that produced 
by the phenomena themselves. They 
seemed to gag and bind him. He could 
only stare, and sometimes weakly mut- 
ter that it would n’t be believed down 
Bleeding Heart Yard that this was 
Pancks ; but he never said a word more, 
or made a sign more, even to Little 
Dorrit. Mr. Pancks crowned his mys- 
teries by making himself acquainted 
with Tip in some unknown manner, 
and taking a Sunday saunter into the 
college on that gentleman’s arm. 
Throughout he never took any notice of 
Little Dorrit, save once or twice when 
he happened to come close to her, and 
there was no one very near ; on which oc- 
casions, he said in passing, with a friend- 
ly look and a puff of encouragement, 
“Pancks the gypsy — fortune-telling.” 

Little Dorrit worked and strove as 
usual, wondering at all this, but keep- 
ing her wonder, as she had from her 
earliest years kept many heavier loads, 
in her own breast. A change had sto- 
len, and was stealing yet, over the pa- 
tient heart. Every day found her some- 
thing more retiring than the day before. 
To pass in and out of the prison unno- 
ticed, and elsewhere to be overlooked 
and forgotten, were, for herself, her 
chief desires. 

To her own room too, strangely as- 
sorted room for her delicate youth and 
character, she was glad to retreat as of- 
ten as she could without desertion of 
any duty. There were afternoon times 
when she was unemployed, when visit- 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


169 


ors dropped in to play a hand at cards 
with her father, when she could be 
spared and was better away. Then she 
w r ould flit along the yard, climb the 
scores of stairs that led to her room, 
and take her seat at the window. Many 
combinations did those spikes upon the 
wall assume, many light shapes did 
the strong iron weave itself into, many 
golden touches fell upon the rust, while 
Little Dorrit sat there musing. Now zig- 
zags sprung into the cruel pattern some- 
times, when she saw it through a burst 
of tears ; but beautiful or hardened still, 
always over it and under it and through 
it she was fain to look in her solitude, 
seeing everything with that ineffaceable 
brand. 

A garret, and a Marshalsea garret 
without compromise, was Little Dorrit’ s 
room. Beautifully kept, it was ugly in 
itself, and had little but cleanliness and 
air to set it off ; for what embellish- 
ment she had ever been able to buy 
had gone to her father’s room. How- 
beit, for this poor place she showed an 
increasing love ; and to sit in it alone 
became her favorite rest. 

Insomuch that on a certain after- 
noon during the Pancks mysteries, 
when she was seated at her window, 
and heard Maggy’s well-known step 
coming up the stairs, she was very 
much disturbed by the apprehension of 
being summoned away. As Maggy’s 
step came higher up and nearer, she 
trembled and faltered; and it was as 
much as she could do to speak, when 
Maggy at length appeared. 

“ Please, little mother,” said Mag- 
gy, panting for breath, “you must come 
down and see him. He ’s here.” 

“Who, Maggy?” 

“Who, o’ course Mr. Clennam. He ’s 
in your father’s room, and he says to 
me, Maggy, will you be so kind and go 
and say it ’s only me.” 

“I am not very well, Maggy. I had 
better not go. I am going to lie down. 
See ! I lie down now, to ease my head. 
Say, with my grateful regard, that you 
left me so, or I would have come.” 

“Well, it ain’t very polite, though, 
little mother,” said the staring Maggy, 
“ to turn your face away, neither ! ” 

Maggy was very susceptible to per- 


sonal slights, and very ingenious in in- 
venting them. “ Putting both your 
hands afore your face too ! ” she went 
on. “If you can’t bear the looks of a 
poor thing, it w'ould be better to tell 
her so at once, and not go and shut her 
out like that, hurting her feelings and 
breaking her heart at ten year old, 
poor thing ! ” 

“ It ’s to ease my head, Maggy.” 

“Well, and if you cry to ease your 
head, little mother, let me cry too. 
Don’t go and have all the crying to 
yourself,” expostulated Maggy, “that 
ain’t not being greedy.” And immedi- 
ately began to blubber. 

It was with same difficulty that she 
could be induced to go back with the 
excuse ; but the promise of being told 
a story, — of old her great delight, — 
on condition that she concentrated her 
faculties upon the errand and left her 
little mistress to herself for an hour 
longer, combined with a misgiving on 
Maggy’s part that she had left her good 
temper at the bottom of the staircase, 
prevailed. So away she went, mutter- 
ing her message all the way to keep it 
in her mind, and at the appointed time 
came back. 

“He was very sorry, I can tell you,” 
she announced, “ and wanted to send a 
doctor. And he ’s coming again to- 
morrow, he is, and I don’t think he ’ll 
have a good sleep to-night along o’ 
hearing about your head, little mother. 
O my ! Ain’t you been a crying ! ” 

“ I think I have, a little, Maggy.” 

“A little! Oh!” 

“ But it ’s all over now, — all over for 
good, Maggy. And my head is much 
better and cooler, and I am quite com- 
fortable. I am very glad I did not go 
down.” 

Her great staring child tenderly em- 
braced her ; and having smoothed her 
hair, and bathed her forehead and eyes 
with cold water (offices in which her 
awkward hands became skilful), hugged 
her again, exulted in her brighter looks, 
and stationed her in her chair by the 
window. Over against this chair, Mag- 
gy, with apoplectic exertions that were 
not at all required, dragged the box 
which was her seat on story-telling oc- 
casions, sat down upon it, hugged her 


170 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


cwn knees, and said, with a voracious 
appetite for stories, and with widely 
opened eyes, — 

“Now, little mother, let’s have a 
good ’un ! ” 

“ What shall it be about, Maggy?” 

“O, let’s have a Princess,” said 
Maggy, “ and let her be a reg’lar one. 
Beyond all belief, you know ! ” 

Little Dorrit considered for a mo- 
ment ; and with a rather sad smile upon 
her face, which was flushed by the sun- 
set, began : — 

“ Maggy, there w r as once upon a time 
a fine King, and he had everything he 
could wish for, and a great deal more. 
He had gold and silver, diamonds and 
rubies, riches of every kind. He had 
palaces, and he had — ” 

“ Hospitals,” interposed Maggy, still 
nursing her knees. “ Let him have 
hospitals, because they ’re so comfort- 
able. Hospitals with lots of Chicking.” 

“Yes, he had plenty of them, and he 
had plenty of everything.” 

“ Plenty of baked potatoes, for in- 
stance ? ” said Maggy. 

“ Plenty of everything.” 

“Lor!” chuckled Maggy, giving 
her knees a hug. “ Was n’t it prime ! ” 

“ This King had a daughter; who 
was the wisest and most beautiful Prin- 
cess that ever was seen. When she 
was a child she understood all her les- 
sons before her masters taught them to 
her ; and when she was grown up, she 
was the wonder of the world. Now, 
near the Palace where this Princess 
lived, there was a cottage in which there 
was a poor little tiny woman, who lived 
all alone by herself.” 

“ A old woman,” said Maggy, with 
an unctuous smack of her lips. 

“No, not an old woman. Quite a 
young one.” 

“ I wonder she wam’t afraid,” said 
Maggy. “Go qn, please.” 

“ The Princess passed the cottage 
nearly every day, and whenever she 
went by in her beautiful carriage, she 
saw the poor tiny woman spinning at 
her wheel, and she looked at the tiny 
woman, and the tiny woman looked at 
her. So, one day she stopped the 
coachman a little way from the cottage, 
and got out and walked on and peeped 


in at the door, and there, as usual, was 
the tiny woman spinning at her wheel, 
and she looked at the Princess, and the 
Princess looked at her.” 

“Like trying to stare one another 
out,” said Maggy. “Please go on, 
little mother.” 

‘ ‘ The Princess was such a wonderful 
Princess that she had the power of 
knowing secrets, and she said to the 
tiny woman, Why do you keep it there ? 
This showed her directly that the Prin- 
cess knew why she lived all alone by 
herself spinning at her wheel, and she 
kneeled down at the Princess’s feet, 
and asked her never to betray her. So 
the Princess said, I never will betray 
you. Let me see it. So the tiny wo- 
man closed the shutter of the cottage 
window and fastened the door, and, 
trembling from head to foot for fear that 
any one should suspect her, opened a 
very secret place, and showed the Prin- 
cess a shadow.” 

“ Lor ! ” said Maggy. 

“ It was the shadow of Some one 
who had gone by long before : of Some 
one who had gone on far away quite out 
of reach, never, never to come back. 
It was bright to look at ; and when the 
tiny woman showed it to the Princess, 
she was proud of it with all her heart, 
as a great, great treasure. When the 
Princess had considered it a little while, 
she said to the tiny woman, And you 
keep watch over this, every day ? And 
she cast down her eyes, and whispered, 
Yes. Then the Princess said, Remind 
me why. To which the other replied, 
that no one so good and kind had ever 
passed that way, and that was why in 
the beginning. She said, too, that no- 
body missed it, that nobody was the 
worse for it, that Some one had gone 
on to those who were expecting him — ” 

“ Some one was a man then ? ” inter- 
posed Maggy. 

Little Dorrit timidly said yes, she be- 
lieved so ; and resumed : — 

“ — Had gone on to those who were 
expecting him, and that this remem- 
brance was stolen or kept back from no- 
body. The Princess made answer, Ah ! 
But when the cottager died it would be 
discovered there. The tiny woman 
told her No; when that time came, it 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


would sink quietly into her own grave, 
and would never be found.” 

“Well, to be sure!” said Maggy. 
“Go on, please.” 

“ The Princess was very much aston- 
ished to hear this, as you may suppose, 
Maggy.” 

(“And well she might be,” said 
Maggy.) 

“ So she resolved to watch the tiny 
woman, and see what came of it. Every 
day, she drove in her beautiful carriage 
by the cottage door, and there she saw 
the tiny woman always alone by herself 
spinning at her wheel, and she looked 
at the tiny woman, and the tiny woman 
looked at her. At last one day the 
wheel was still, and the tiny woman 
was not to be seen. When the Princess 
made inquiries why the wheel had 
stopped, and where the tiny woman 
was, she was informed that the wheel 
had stopped because there was nobody 
to turn it, the tiny woman being dead.” 

(“ They ought to have took her to 
the Hospital,” said Maggy, “ and then 
she ’d have got over it.” 

“ The Princess, after crying a very 
little for the loss of the tiny woman, 
dried her eyes and got out of her car- 
riage at the place where she had stopped 
it before, and went to the cottage and 
peeped in at the door. There was no- 
body to look at her now, and nobody 
for her to look at, so she went in at 
once to search for the treasured shadow. 
But there was no sign of it to be found 
anywhere ; and then she knew that the 
tiny woman had told her the truth, and 
that it would never give anybody any 
trouble, and that it had sunk quietly 
into her own grave, and that she and it 
were at rest together. 

“ That ’s all, Maggy.” 

The sunset flush was so bright on 
Little Dorrit’s face when she came thus 
to the end of her story, that she inter- 
posed her hand to shade it. 

“Had she got to be old?” Maggy 
asked. 

“ The tiny woman ? ” 

“ Ah ! ” 

“ I don’t know,” said Little Dorrit. 
“ But it would have been just the same, 
if she had been ever and ever so old.” 

“ Would it raly ! ” said Maggy. 


171 

“Well, I suppose it would, though.” 
And sat staring and ruminating. 

She sat so long with her eyes wide 
open, that at length Little Dorrit, to 
entice her from her box, rose and looked 
out of window. As she glanced down 
into the yard, she saw Pancks come 
in, and leer up with the corner of his 
eye as he went by. 

“Who’s he, little mother?” said 
Maggy. She had joined her at the 
window and was leaning on her shoul- 
der. “ I see him come in and out 
often.” 

“ I have heard him called a fortune- 
teller,” said Little Dorrit* “But I 
doubt if he could tell many people 
even their past or present fortunes.” 

“Couldn’t have told the Princess 
hers?” said Maggy.. 

Little Dorrit, looking musingly down 
into the dark valley of the prison, shook 
her head. 

“Nor the tiny woman hers?” said 
Maggy. 

“ No,” said Little Dorrit, with the 
sunset very bright upon her. “But 
let us come away from the window.” 


CHAPTER XXV. 

CONSPIRATORS AND OTHERS. 

The private residence of Mr. Pancks 
was in Pentonville, where he lodged 
on the second floor of a professional 
gentleman in an extremely small way, 
who had an inner door within the 
street door, poised on a spring and 
starting open with a click like a trap ; 
and who wrote up in the fan-light, 
Rugg, General Agent, Account- 
ant, Debts Recovered. 

This, scroll, majestic in its severe 
simplicity, illuminated a little slip of 
front garden abutting on the thirsty 
high-road, where a few of the dustiest 
of leaves hung their dismal heads and 
led a life of choking. A professor of 
writing occupied the first floor, and 
enlivened the garden railings with 
glass cases containing choice examples 
of what his pupils had been before six 
lessons and while the whole of his 


172 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


young family shook the table, and what 
they had become after six lessons when 
the young family was under restraint. 
The tenancy of Mr. Pancks was limited 
to one airy bedroom ; he covenanting 
and agreeing with Mr. Rugg his land- 
lord, that in consideration of a certain 
scale of payments accurately defined, 
and on certain verbal notice duly given, 
he should be at liberty to elect to share 
the Sunday breakfast, dinner, tea, or 
supper, or each or any or all of those 
repasts or meals, of Mr. and Miss Rugg 
(his daughter) in the back parlor. 

Miss Rugg was a lady of a little 
property, *vhich she had acquired, to- 
gether with much distinction in the 
neighborhood, by having her heart 
severely lacerated and her feelings 
mangled by a middle-aged baker, resi- 
dent in the vicinity, against whom she 
had, by the agency of Sir. Rugg, found 
it necessary to proceed at law' to recov- 
er damages for a breach of promise of 
marriage. The baker, having been, 
by the counsel for Miss Rugg, wither- 
ingly denounced on that occasion up 
to the full amount of twenty guineas, 
at the rate of about eighteen-pence an 
epithet, and having been cast in cor- 
responding damages, still suffered oc- 
casional persecution from the youth of 
Pentonville. But Miss Rugg environed 
by the majesty of the law, and having 
her damages invested in the public 
securities, was regarded with consid- 
eration. 

In the society of Mr. Rugg, who had 
a round white visage, as if all his blush- 
es had been drawn out of him long ago, 
and who had a ragged yellow head like a 
worn-out hearth-broom ; and in the so- 
ciety of Miss Rugg, w-ho had little nan- 
keen spots, like shirt-buttons, all over 
her face, and whose own yellow tresses 
were rather scrubby than luxuriant ; Mr. 
Pancks had usually dined on Sundays 
for some few years, and had twice a 
week, or so, enjoyed an evening colla- 
tion of bread, Dutch cheese, and por- 
ter. Mr. Pancks was one of the very 
few marriageable men for whom Miss 
Rugg had no terrors, the argument 
with which he reassured himself being 
tw'ofold ; that is to say, firstly, “ that it 
wouldn’t do twice,” and secondly 


“that he wasn’t worth it.” Fortified 
within this double armor, Mr. Pancks 
snorted at Miss Rugg on easy terms. 

Up to this time, Mr. Pancks had trans- 
acted little or no business at his quar- 
ters in Pentonville, except in the sleep- 
ing line ; but, now that he had become a 
fortune-teller, he was often closeted af- 
ter midnight with Mr. Rugg in his lit- 
tle front-parlor office, and, even after 
those untimely hours, burnt tallow in 
his bedroom. Though his duties as 
his proprietor’s grubber were in no 
wise lessened, and though that service 
bore no greater resemblance to a bed 
of roses than was to be discovered in 
its many thorns, some new branch of 
industry made a constant demand up- 
on him. When he cast off the Patri- 
arch at night, it was only to take an 
anonymous craft in tow, and labor 
away afresh in other waters. 

The advance, from a personal ac- 
quaintance with the elder Mr. Cliiv- 
ery, to an introduction to his amiable 
wife and disconsolate son, may have 
been easy ; but, easy or not, Mr. Pancks 
soon made it. He nestled in the bosom 
of the tobacco business within a week or 
two after his first appearance in the col- 
lege, and particularly addressed himself 
to the cultivation of a good understand- 
ing with Young John. In this endeav- 
or he so prospered as to lure that pining 
shepherd forth from the groves, and 
tempt him to undertake mysterious 
missions ; on which he began to disap- 
pear at uncertain intervals for as long a 
space as two or three days together. 
The prudent Mrs. Chivery, who won- 
dered greatly at this change, would 
have protested against it as detrimen- 
tal to the Highland typification on the 
door-post, but for two forcible reasons : 
one, that her John was roused to take 
strong interest in the business which 
these starts were supposed to advance, 
— and this she held to be good for his 
drooping spirits ; the other, that Mr. 
Pancks confidentially agreed to pay her, 
for the occupation of her son’s time, 
at the handsome rate of seven and six- 
pence per day. The proposal originat- 
ed with himself, and was couched in 
the pithy terms, “If your John is 
weak enough, ma’am, not to take it, 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


i73 


that is no reason why you should be, 
don’t you see ? So, quite between 
ourselves, ma’am, business being busi- 
ness, here it is ! ” 

What Mr. Chivery thought of these 
things, or how much or how little 
he knew about them, was never gath- 
ered from himself. It has been already 
remarked that he was a man of few 
words ; and it may be here observed, 
that he had imbibed a professional 
habit of locking everything up. He 
locked himself up as carefully as he 
locked up the Marshalsea debtors. 
Even his custom of bolting his meals 
may have been a part of an uniform 
whole ; but there is no question, that, 
as to all other purposes, he kept his 
mouth as he kept the Marshalsea door. 
He never opened it without occasion. 
When it was necessary to let anything 
out, he opened it a little way, held it 
open just as long as sufficed for the 
purpose, and locked it again. Even as 
he would be sparing of his trouble 
at the Marshalsea door, and would 
keep a visitor who wanted to go out 
waiting for a few moments if he saw 
another visitor coming down the yard, 
so that one turn of the key should suf- 
fice for both, similarly he would often 
reserve a remark if he perceived an- 
other on its way to his lips, and would 
deliver himself of the two together. 
As to any key to his inner knowledge 
being to be found in his face, the Mar- 
shalsea key was as legible an index to 
the individual characters and histories 
upon which it w'as turned. 

That Mr. Pancks should be moved to 
invite any one to dinner at Pentonville 
was an unprecedented fact in his calen- 
dar. But he invited Young John to 
dinner, and even brought him within 
range of the dangerous (because ex- 
pensive) fascinations of Miss Rugg. 
The banquet was appointed for a Sun- 
day, and Miss Rugg with her own 
hands stuffed a leg of mutton with 
oysters on the occasion, and sent it 
to the baker’s, — not the baker’s, but 
an opposition establishment. Provis- 
ion of oranges, apples, and nuts was 
also made. And rum was brought 
home by Mr. Pancks on Saturday 
night to gladden the visitor’s heart. 


The store of creature comforts was 
not the chief part of the visitor’s recep- 
tion. Its special feature was a foregone 
family confidence and sympathy. When 
Young John appeared at half past one, 
without the ivory hand and waistcoat of 
golden sprigs, the sun shorn of his 
beams by disastrous clouds, Mr. 
Pancks presented him to the yellow- 
haired Ruggs as the young man he had 
so often mentioned who loved Miss Dor- 
rit. 

“I am glad,” said Mr. Rugg, chal- 
lenging him specially in that character, 
“to have the distinguished gratification 
of making your acquaintance, sir. Your 
feelings do you honor. You are young ; 
may you never outlive your feelings ! 
If I was to outlive my own feelings, 
sir,” said Mr. Rugg, who was a man of 
many words, and was considered to pos- 
sess a remarkably good address, — “ if I 
was to outlive my own feelings, I ’d 
leave fifty pound in my will to the 
man who would put me out of exist- 
ence.” 

Miss Rugg heaved a sigh. 

“ My daughter, sir,” said Mr. Rugg. 
“ Anastatia, you are no stranger to the 
state of this young man’s affections. 
My daughter has had her trials, sir,” 
Mr. Rugg might have used the word 
more pointedly in the singular number, 
“and she can feel for you.” 

Young John, almost overwhelmed by 
the touching nature of this greeting, 
professed himself to that effect. _ 

“What I envy you, sir, is,” said Mr. 
Rugg, “allow me to take your hat — 
we are rather short of pegs — I ’ll j3ut it 
in the corner, nobody will tread in it 
there — what I envy you, sir, is the 
luxury of your own feelings. I belong 
to a profession in which that luxury is 
sometimes denied us.” 

Young John replied, with acknowl- 
edgments, that he only hoped he did 
what was right, and what showed how 
entirely he was devoted to Miss Dorrit. 
He wished to be unselfish ; and he 
hoped he was. He wished to do any- 
thing as laid in his power to serve Miss 
Dorrit, altogether putting himself out 
of sight ; and he hoped he did. It was 
but little that he could do, but he hoped 
he did it. 


174 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


“ Sir,” said Mr. Rugg, taking him by 
the hand, “you are a young man that it 
does one good to come across. You are 
a young man that I should like to put 
in the witness-box, to humanize the 
minds of the legal profession. I hope 
you have brought your appetite with 
you, and intend to play a good knife and 
fork?” 

“Thank you, sir,” returned Young 
John, “ I don’t eat much at present.” 

Mr. Rugg drew him a little apart. 
“ My daughter’s case, sir,” said he, “ at 
the time when, in vindication of her 
outraged feelings and her sex, she 
became the plaintiff in Rugg and Haw- 
kins. I suppose I could have put it in 
evidence, Mr. Chivery, if I had thought 
it worth my while, that the amount of 
solid sustenance my daughter consumed 
at that period did not exceed ten ounces 
. per week.” 

“ I think I go a little beyond that, 
sir,” returned the other, hesitating, as if 
he confessed it with some shame. 

“ But in your case there ’s no fiend in 
human form,” said Mr. Rugg. with 
argumentative smile and action of hand. 
“ Observe, Mr. Chivery ! No fiend in 
human form ! ” 

“No, sir, certainly,” Young John 
added with simplicity, “ I should be 
very sorry if there was.” 

“The sentiment,” said Mr. Rugg, 
“ is what I should have expected from 
your known principles. It would affect 
my daughter greatly, sir, if she heard it. 
As I perceive the mutton, I am glad she 
didn’t hear it. Mr. Pancks, on this 
occasion, pray face me. My dear, face 
Mr. Chivery. For what we are going 
to receive, may we (and Miss Dorrit) 
be truly thankful ! ” 

But for a grave waggishness in Mr. 
Rugg’s manner of delivering this intro- 
duction to the feast, it might have ap- 
peared that Miss Dorrit was expected 
to be one of the company. Pancks rec- 
ognized the sally in his usual way, and 
took in his provender in his usual way. 
Miss Rugg, perhaps making up some 
of her arrears, likewise took very kind- 
ly to the mutton,, and it rapidly dimin- 
ished. to the bone. A bread-and-butter 
pudding entirely disappeared, and a 
considerable amount of cheese and 


radishes vanished by the same means. 
Then came the dessert. 

Then also, and before the broaching 
of the rum and ■water, came Mr. 
Pancks’s note-book. The ensuing busi- 
ness proceedings were brief but curious, 
and rather in the nature of a conspira- 
cy. Mr. Pancks looked over his note- 
book, which was now getting full, studi- 
ously ; and picked out little extracts, 
which he wrote on separate slips of 
paper on the table; Mr. Rugg, in the 
mean while, looking at him with close 
attention, and Young John losing his 
uncollected eye in mists of meditation. 
When Mr. Pancks, who supported the 
character of chief conspirator, had com- 
pleted his extracts, he looked them over, 
corrected them, put up his note-book, 
and held them like a hand at cards. 

“ Now, there ’s a churchyard in Bed- 
fordshire,” said Pancks. “ Who takes 
it?” 

“I ’ll take it, sir,” returned Mr. 
Rugg, “if no one bids.” 

Mr. Pancks dealt him his card, and 
looked at his hand again. 

“ Now, there ’s an Enquiry in York,” 
said Pancks. “ Who takes it ? ” 

“ I ’m not good for York,” said Mr. 
Rugg. 

“Then, perhaps,” pursued Pancks, 
“ you ’ll be so obliging, John Chiv- 
ery ? ” 

Young John assenting, Pancks dealt 
him his card, and consulted his hand 
again. 

“ There ’s a Church in London ; I 
may as well take that. And a Family 
Bible ; I may as well take that, too. 
That ’s two to me. Two to me,” re- 
peated Pancks, breathing hard over his 
cards. “ Here ’s a Clerk at Durham 
for you, John, and an old seafaring gen- 
tleman at Dunstable for you, Mr. Rugg. 
Two to me, was it? Yes, two to me. 
Here ’s a Stone ; three to me. And a 
Still-born Baby ; four to me. And all, 
for the present, told.” 

When he had thus disposed of his 
cards, all being done very quietly and 
in a suppressed tone, Mr. Pancks puffed 
his way into his own breast-pocket and 
tugged out a canvas bag ; from which, 
with a sparing hand, he told forth mon- 
ey for travelling expenses in two little 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


i7S 


portions. “ Cash goes out fast,” he 
said anxiously, as he pushed a portion 
to each of his male companions, “very 
fast.” 

“ I can only assure you, Mr. Pancks,” 
said Young John, “that I deeply re- 
gret my circumstances being such that 
I can’t afford to pay my own charges, 
or that it ’s not advisable to allow me 
the time necessary for my doing the dis- 
tances on foot. Because nothing would 
give me greater satisfaction than to 
walk myself off my legs without fee or 
reward.” 

This young man’s disinterestedness 
appeared so very ludicrous in the eyes 
of Miss Rugg, that she was obliged to 
effect a precipitate retirement from the 
company, and to sit upon the stairs un- 
til she had had her laugh out. Mean- 
while Mr. Pancks, looking, not without 
some pity, at Young John, slowly and 
thoughtfully twisted up his canvas bag 
as if he were wringing its neck. The la- 
dy, returning as he restored it to his 
pocket, mixed rum and water for the 
party, not forgetting her fair self, and 
handed to every one his glass. When 
all were supplied, Mr. Rugg rose, and, 
silently holding out his glass at arm’s 
length above the centre of the table, by 
that gesture invited the other three to 
add theirs, and to unite in a general 
conspiratorial clink. The ceremony 
was effective up to a certain point, and 
would have been wholly so throughout, 
if Miss Rugg, as she raised her glass 
to her lips in completion of it, had 
not happened to look at Young John ; 
when she was again so overcome by the 
contemptible comicality of his disinter- 
estedness, as to splutter some ambrosial 
drops of rum and water around, and 
withdraw in confusion. 

Such was the dinner, without prece- 
dent, given by Pancks at Pentonville ; 
and such was the busy and strange life 
Pancks led. The only waking moments 
at which he appeared to relax from his 
cares, and to recreate himself by going 
anywhere or saying anything without a 
pervading object, were when he showed 
a dawning interest in the lame foreigner 
with the stick, down Bleeding Heart 
Yard. 

The foreigner, by name John Bap- 


tist Cavalletto, — they called him Mr. 
Baptist in the Yard, — was such a chirp- 
ing, easy, hopeful little fellow, that his 
attraction for Pancks was probably in 
the force of contrast. Solitary, weak, 
and scantily acquainted with the most 
necessary words of the only language 
in which he could communicate with 
the people about him, he went with the 
stream of his fortunes in a brisk way 
that was new in those parts. With lit- 
tle "to eat, and less to drink, and noth- 
ing to wear but what he wore upon him, 
or had brought tied up in one of the 
smallest bundles that ever vvere seen, 
he put as bright a face upon it as if he 
were in the most flourishing circum- 
stances, when he first hobbled up and 
down the Yard, humbly propitiating the 
general good-will with his white teeth. 

It was up-hill work for a foreigner, 
lame or sound, to make his way with the 
Bleeding Hearts. In the first place, 
they were vaguely persuaded that every 
foreigner had a knife about him ; in the 
second, they held it to be a sound con- 
stitutional national axiom, that he ought 
to go home to his own country. They 
never thought of inquiring how many 
of their own countrymen would be re- 
turned upon their hands from divers 
parts of the world, if the principle were 
generally recognized ; they considered 
it practically and peculiarly British. In 
the third place, they had a notion that 
it was a sort of Divine visitation upon a 
foreigner, that he was not an English- 
man, and that all kinds of calamities 
happened to his country because it did 
things that England did not, and did 
not do things that England did. In 
this belief, to be sure, they had long 
been carefully trained by the Barnacles 
and Stiltstalkings, who were always pro- 
claiming to them, officially and unoffi- 
cially, that no country which failed to 
submit itself to those two large families 
could possibly hope to be under the 
protection of Providence ; and who, 
when they believed it, disparaged them 
in private as the most prejudiced people 
under the sun. 

This, therefore, might be called a po- 
litical position of the Bleeding Hearts ; 
but they entertained other objections to 
having foreigners in the Yard. They 


176 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


believed that foreigners were always 
badly off ; and though they were as ill 
off themselves as they could desire to 
be, that did not diminish the force of 
the objection. They believed that for- 
eigners were dragooned and bayonet- 
ed ; and though they certainly got their 
own skulls promptly fractured if they 
showed any ill -humor, still it was with 
a blunt instrument, and *that didn't 
count. They believed that foreigners 
were always immoral ; and though they 
had an occasional assize at home, and 
now and then a divorce case or so, that 
had nothing to do with it. They be- 
lieved that foreigners had no independ- 
ent spirit, as never being escorted to 
the poll in droves by Lord Decimus 
Tite Barnacle, with colors flying and 
the tune of Rule Britannia playing. 
Not to be tedious, they had many other 
beliefs of a similar kind. 

Against these obstacles the lame for- 
eigner with the stick had to make head 
as well as he could ; not absolutely sin- 
gle-handed, because Mr. Arthur Clen- 
nam had recommended him to the 
Plornishes (he lived at the top of the 
same house), but still at heavy odds. 
However, the Bleeding Hearts were 
kind hearts ; and when they saw the 
little fellow cheerily limping about with 
a good-humored face, doing no harm, 
drawing no knives, committing no out- 
rageous immoralities, living chiefly on 
farinaceous and milk diet, and playing 
with Mrs. Plornish’s children of an 
evening, they began to think that al- 
though he could never hope to be an 
Englishman, still it would be hard to 
visit that affliction on his head. They 
began to accommodate themselves to 
his level, calling him “ Mr. Baptist,” 
but treating him like a baby, and laugh- 
ing immoderately at his lively gestures 
and his childish English, — more be- 
cause he didn’t mind it, and laughed 
too. They spoke to him in very loud 
voices as if he were stone deaf. They 
constructed sentences, by way of teach- 
ing him the language in its purity, such 
as were addressed by the savages to 
Captain Cook, or by Friday to Robin- 
son Crusoe. Mrs. Plornish was partic- 
ularly ingenious in this art ; and at- 
tained so much celebrity for saying, 


“ Me ope you leg well soon,” that it 
was considered in the Yard but a very 
short remove indeed from speaking Ital- 
ian. Even Mrs. Plornish herself be- 
gan to think that she had a natural call 
towards that language. As he became 
more popular, household objects were 
brought into requisition for his instruc- 
tion in a copious vocabulary ; and when- 
ever he appeared in the Yard, ladies 
would fly out at their doors crying, 
“ Mr. Baptist, — teapot ! ” “ Mr. Bap- 
tist, — dust - pan ! ” “Mr. Baptist, — 
flour-dredger ! ” “ Mr. Baptist, — cof- 

fee-biggin ! ” At the same time exhib- 
iting those articles, and penetrating him 
with a sense of the appalling difficul- 
ties of the Anglo-Saxon tongue. 

It was in this stage of his progress, 
and in about the third week of his oc- 
cupation, that Mr. Pancks’s fancy be- 
came attracted by the little man. 
Mounting to his attic, attended by Mrs. 
Plornish as interpreter, he found Mr. 
Baptist with no furniture but his bed 
on the ground' a table, and a chair, 
carving with the aid of a few simple 
tools in the blithest way possible. 

“ Now, old chap,” said Mr. Pancks, 
“ pay up ! ” 

He had his money ready, folded in a 
scrap of paper, and laughingly handed 
it in ; then, with a free action, threw out 
as many fingers of his right hand as 
there were shillings, and made a cut 
crosswise in the air for an odd sixpence. 

“ Oh ! ” said Mr. Pancks, watching 
him, wonderingly. “ That ’s it, is it ? 
You ’re a quick customer. It ’s all 
right. I did n’t expect to receive it, 
though.” 

Mrs. Plornish here interposed with 
great condescension, and explained to 
Mr. Baptist. “ E please. E glad get 
money.” 

The little man smiled and nodded. 
His bright face seemed uncommonly 
attractive to Mr. Pancks. “ How ’s he 
getting on in his limb ? ” he asked Mrs. 
Plornish. 

“ O, he ’s a deal better, sir,” said 
Mrs. Plornish. “ We expect next week 
he ’ll be able to leave off his stick en- 
tirely.” (The opportunity being too 
favorable to be lost, Mrs. Plornish dis- 
played her great accomplishment by 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


177 


explaining, with pardonable pride, to 
Mr. Baptist, “ E ope you leg well 
soon.”) 

“ He ’s a merry fellow, too,” said Mr. 
Pancks, admiring him as if he were a 
mechanical toy. “ How does he live?” 

“Why, sir,” rejoined Mrs. Plornish, 
“ he turns out to have quite a power of 
carving them flowers that you see him 
at now.” (Mr. Baptist, watching their 
faces as they spoke, held up his work. 
Mrs. Plornish interpreted in her Italian 
manner, on behalf of Mr. Pancks, “ E 
please. Double good ! ”) 

“Can he live by that?” asked Mr. 
Pancks. 

“ He can live on very little, sir, and 
it is expected as he will be able, in time, 
to make a very good living. Mr. Clen- 
nam got it him to do, and gives him 
odd jobs, besides, in at the Works next 
door, — makes ’em for him, in short, 
when he knows he wants ’em.” 

“ And what does he do with himself, 
now, when he ain’t hard at it?” said 
Mr. Pancks. 

“ Why, not much as yet, sir, on ac- 
counts, I suppose, of not being able to 
walk much ; but he goes about the 
Yard, and he chats without particular 
understanding or being understood, and 
he plays with the children, and he sits 
in the sun, — he’ll sit down anywhere, 
as if it was a arm-chair, — and he ’ll 
sing, and he ’ll laugh ! ” 

“ Laugh ! ” echoed Mr. Pancks. 
“ He looks to me as if every tooth in 
his head was always laughing.” 

“ But whenever he gets to the top of 
the steps at t’other end of the Yard,” 
said Mrs. Plornish, “he’ll peep out in 
the curiousest way ! So that some of 
us thinks he ’s peeping out towards 
where his own country is, and some of 
us thinks he ’s looking for somebody he 
don’t want to see, and some of us don’t 
know what to think.” 

Mr. Baptist seemed to have a general 
understanding of what she said ; or 
perhaps his. quickness caught and ap- 
plied her slight action of peeping. In 
any case, he closed his eyes and tossed 
his head with the air of a man who had 
his sufficient reasons for what he did, 
and said in his own tongue, it didn’t 
matter. Altro ! 


“ What’s Altro? ” said Pancks. 

“Hem! It’s a sort of a general 
kind of expression, sir,” said Mrs. • 
Plornish. 

“ Is it ? ” said Pancks. “ Why, then, 
Altro to you, old chap. Good- afternoon. 
Altro ! ” 

Mr. Baptist in his vivacious way re- 
peating the word several times, Mr. 
Pancks in his duller way gave it him 
back once. From that time it became 
a frequent custom with Pancks the 
gypsy, as he went home jaded at night, 
to pass round by Bleeding Heart Yard, 
go quietly up the stairs, look in at Mr. 
Baptist’s door, and, finding him in his 
room, to say “ Hallo, old chap ! Altro !” 

To which Mr. Baptist would reply, 
with innumerable bright nods and 
smiles, “Altro, signore, altro, altro, 
altro ! ” After this highly condensed 
conversation, Mr. Pancks would go his 
w r ay ; with an appearance of being 
lightened and refreshed. 


CHAPTER XXVI. 
nobody’s state of mind. 

If Arthur Clennam had not arrived 
at that wise decision firmly to restrain 
himself from loving Pet, he would have 
lived on in a state of much perplexity, 
involving difficult struggles with his own 
heart. Not the least of these would 
have been a contention, always waging 
within it, between a tendency to dislike 
Mr. Henry Gowan, if not to regard him 
with positive repugnance, and a whis- 
per that the inclination was unworthy. 
A generous nature is not prone to strong 
aversions, and is slow to admit them 
even dispassionately ; but when it finds 
ill-will gaining upon it, and can discern 
between whiles that its origin is not 
dispassionate, such a nature becomes 
distressed. 

Therefore Mr. Henry Gowan would 
have clouded Clennam’s mind, and 
would have been far oftener present to 
it than more agreeable persons and 
subjects, but for the great prudence of 
his decision aforesaid. As it was, Mr. 
Gowan seemed transferred to Daniel 


12 


178 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


Doyce’s mind ; at all events, it so hap- 
pened that it usually fell to Mr. Doyce’s 
turn, rather than to Clennam’s, to speak 
of him in the friendly conversations they 
held together. These were of frequent 
occurrence now; as the two partners 
shared a portion of a roomy house in 
one of the grave old-fashioned City 
streets, lying not far from the Bank of 
England, by London Wall. 

Mr. Doyce had been to Twickenham 
to pass the day. Clennam had excused 
himself. Mr. Doyce was just come 
home. He put in his head at the door 
of Clennam’s sitting-room to say good 
night. 

“ Come in, come in ! ” said Clennam. 

“ I saw you were reading,” returned 
Doyce, as he entered, “and thought 
you might not care to be disturbed.” 

But for the notable resolution he had 
made, Clennam really might not have 
known what he had been reading; 
really might not have had his eyes upon 
the book for an hour past, though it lay 
open before him. He shut it up, rather 
quickly. 

“ Are they w'ell ? ” he asked. 

“ Yes,” said Doyce ; “ they are well. 
They are all well.” 

Daniel had an old workmanlike habit 
of carrying his pocket-handkerchief in 
his hat. He took it out and wiped his 
forehead with it, slowly repeating, — 
“ They are all well. Miss Minnie look- 
ing particularly well, I thought.” 

“ Any company at the cottage ? ” 

“ No, no company.” 

“ And how did you get on, you four ? ” 
asked Clennam, gayly. 

“There were five of us,” returned 
his partner. “ There was What’s-his- 
name. He was there.” 

“ Who is he? ” said Clennam. 

“ Mr. Henry Go wan.” 

“Ah, to be sure!” cried Clennam, 
with unusual vivacity. “ Yes ! — I for- 
got him.” 

“ As I mentioned, you may remem- 
ber,” said Daniel Doyce, “he is always 
there on Sunday.” 

“Yes, yes,” returned Clennam; “I 
remember now.” 

Daniel Doyce, still wiping his fore- 
head, ploddingly repeated, “Yes. He 
was there, — he was there. O yes, he 


was there. And his dog. He was 
there too.” 

“ Miss Meagles is quite attached to 
— the — dog,” observed Clennam. 

“ Quite so,” assented his partner. 
“ More attached to the dog than I am 
to the man.” 

“ You mean Mr. — ? ” 

“ I mean Mr. Gowan, most decided- 
ly,” said Daniel Doyce. 

There was a gap in the conversation, 
which Clennam devoted to winding up 
his watch. 

“ Perhaps you are a little hasty in 
your judgment,” he said. “ Our judg- 
ments — I am supposing a general 
case — ” 

“ Of course,” said Doyce. 

“ Are so liable to be influenced by 
many considerations, which, almost 
without our knowing it, are unfair, that 
it is necessary to keep a guard upon 
them. For instance, Mr. — ” 

“Gowan,” quietly said Doyce, upon 
whom the utterance of the name almost 
always devolved. 

“ Is young and handsome, easy and 
quick, has talent, and has seen a good 
deal of various kinds of life. It might 
be difficult to give an unselfish reason 
for being prepossessed against him.” 

“ Not difficult for me, I think, Clen- 
nam,” returned his partner. “ I see 
him bringing present anxiety, and, I 
fear, future sorrow, into my old friend’s 
house. I see him wearing deeper lines 
into my old friend’s face, the nearer he 
draws to, and the oftener he looks at, 
the face of his daughter. In short, I see 
him with a net about the pretty and af- 
fectionate creature whom he will never 
make happy.” 

“We don’t know,” said Clennam, 
almost in the tone of a man in pain, 
“that he will not make her happy.” 

“ We don’t know,” returned his part- 
ner, “that the earth will last another 
hundred years, but we think it highly 
probable.” 

“Well, well!” said Clennam, “we 
must be hopeful, and we must at least 
try to be, if not generous (which, in this 
case, we have no opportunity of being), 
just. We will not disparage this gen- 
tleman, because he is successful in his 
addresses to the beautiful object of his 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


179 


ambition ; and we will not question her 
natural right to bestow her love on one 
whom she finds worthy of it.” 

“May be, my friend,” said Doyce ; 
“may be, also, that she is too young 
and petted, too confiding and inexperi- 
enced, to discriminate well.” 

“That,” said Clennam, “would be 
far beyond our power of correction.” 

Daniel Doyce shook his head gravely, 
and rejoined, “ I fear so.” 

“Therefore, in a word,” said Clen- 
nam, “we should make up our minds that 
it is not worthy of us to say any ill of 
Mr. Gowan. It would be a poor thing 
to gratify a prejudice against him. And 
I resolve, for my part, not to depreciate 
him.” 

“ I am not quite so sure of myself, 
and therefore I reserve my privilege of 
objecting to him,” returned the other. 
“ But, if I am not sure of myself, I am 
sure of you, Clennam, and I know what 
an upright man you are, and how much 
to be respected. Good night, my friend 
and partner ! ” He shook his hand, in 
saying this, as if there had been some- 
thing serious at the bottom of their con- 
versation ; and they separated. 

By this time, they had visited the 
family on several occasions, and had 
always observed that even a passing allu- 
sion to Mr. Henry Gowan, when he was 
not among them, brought back the 
cloud which had obscured Mr. M ea- 
gles’s sunshine on the morning of the 
chance encounter at the Ferry. If 
Clennam had ever admitted the forbid- 
den passion into his breast, this period 
might have been a period of real trial ; 
under the actual circumstances, doubt- 
less it was nothing, — nothing. 

Equally, if his heart had given enter- 
tainment to that prohibited guest, his si- 
lent fighting of his way through the men- 
tal condition of this period might have 
been a little meritorious. In the con- 
stant effort not to be betrayed into a new 
phase of the besetting sin of his experi- 
ence, the pursuit of selfish objects by 
low and small means, and to hold in- 
stead to some high principle of honor 
and generosity, there might have been a 
little merit. In the resolution not even 
to avoid Mr. Meagles’s house, lest, in 
the selfish sparing of himself, he should 


bring any slight distress upon' the 
daughter, through making her the cause 
of an estrangement which he believed $ 
the father would regret, there might 
have been a little merit. In the mod- 
est truthfulness of always keeping in 
view the greater equality of Mr. Gow- 
an’s years, and the greater attractions 
of his person and manner, there might 
have been a little merit. In doing all 
this and much more, in a perfectly un- 
affected way and with a manful and 
composed constancy, while the pain 
within him (peculiar as his life and his- 
tory) was very sharp, there might have 
been some quiet strength of character. 

But, after the resolution he had made, 
of course he could have no such merits 
as these ; and such a state of mind was 
nobody’s, — nobody’s. 

Mr. Gowan made it no concern of 
his whether it was nobody’s or some- 
body’s. He preserved his perfect se- 
renity of manner on all occasions, as if 
the possibility of Clennam’s presuming 
to have debated the great question were 
too distant and ridiculous to be im- 
agined. He had always an affability to 
bestow on Clennam and an ease to treat 
him with, which might of itself (in the 
supposititious case of his not having 
taken that sagacious course) have been 
a very uncomfortable element in his 
state of mind. 

“ I quite regret you were not with us 
yesterday,” said Mr. Henry Gowan, 
calling on Clennam next morning. 
“We had an agreeable day up the 
river there.” 

So he had heard, Arthur said. 

“From your partner?” returned 
Henry Gowan. “ What a dear old fel- 
low he is ! ” 

“ I have a great regard for him.” 

“ By Jove, he is the finest creature ! ” 
said Gowan. “ So fresh, so green, trusts 
in such wonderful things ! ” 

Here was one of the many little rough 
points that had a tendency to grate on 
Clennam’s hearing. He put it aside by 
merely repeating that he had a high re- 
gard for Mr. Doyce. 

“ He is charming ! To see him moon- 
ing along to that time of life, laying down 
nothing by the way and picking up noth- 
ing by the way, is delightful. It warms 


i8o 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


a man. So unspoilt, so simple, such a 
good soul ! Upon my life, Mr. Clen- 
F nam, one feels desperately worldly and 
wicked, in comparison with such an in- 
nocent creature. I speak for myself, let 
me add, without including you. You 
are genuine, also.” 

“ Thank you for the compliment,” 
said Clennam, ill at ease; “you are, 
too, I hope ? ” 

“ So so,” rejoined the other. “ To 
be candid with you, tolerably. I am 
not a great impostor. Buy one of my 
pictures, and I assure you, in confi- 
dence, it will not be worth the money. 
Buy one of another man’s, — any great 
professor who beats me hollow, — and 
the chances are that the more you give 
him, the more he ’ll impose upon you. 
They all do it.” 

“ All painters ? ” 

“ Painters, writers, patriots, all the 
rest who have stands in the market. 
Give almost any man I know, ten 
pounds, and he will impose upon you 
to a corresponding extent; a thousand 
pounds, — to a corresponding extent ; 
ten thousand pounds, — to a correspond- 
ing extent. So great the success, so 
great the imposition. But what a capi- 
tal world it is ! ” cried Gowan with 
warm enthusiasm. “What a jolly, ex- 
cellent, lovable world it is!” 

“I had rather thought,” said Clen- 
nam, “that the principle you mention 
was chiefly acted on by — ” 

“ By the Barnacles ? ” interrupted 
Gowan, laughing. 

“ By the political gentlemen who con- 
descend to keep the Circumlocution 
Office.” 

“ Ah ! Don’t be hard upon the Bar- 
nacles,” said Gowan, laughing afresh, 
“ they are darling fellows ! Even poor 
little Clarence, the born idiot of the 
family, is the most agreeable and most 
endearing blockhead ! And by Jupiter, 
with a kind of cleverness in him, too, 
that would astonish you ! ” 

“ It would. Very much,” said Clen- 
nam, dryly. 

“And after all,” cried Gowan, with 
that characteristic balancing of his 
which reduced everything in the wide 
world to the same light weight, “though 
I can’t deny that the Circumlocution 


Office may ultimately shipwreck every- 
body and everything, still, that will 
probably not be in our time, — and it ’s 
a school for gentlemen.” 

“It’s a very dangerous, unsatisfac- 
tory, and expensive school to the peo- 
ple who pay to keep the pupils there, I 
am afraid,” said Clennam, shaking his 
head. 

“Ah! You are a terrible fellow,” 
returned Gowan, airily. “ I can under- 
stand how you have frightened that little 
donkey, Clarence, the most estimable 
of mooncalves (I really love him) near- 
ly out of his wits. But enough of him, 
and of all the rest of them. I want to 
present you to my mother, Mr. Clen- 
nam. Pray do me the favor to give me 
the opportunity.” 

In nobody’s state of mind, there was 
nothing Clennam would have desired 
less, or would have been more at a loss 
how to avoid. 

“ My mother lives in the most primi- 
tive manner down in that dreary red- 
brick dungeon at Hampton Court,” said 
Gowan. “ If you would make your own 
appointment, suggest your own day for 
permitting me to take you there to din- 
ner, you would be bored and she would 
be charmed. Really, that ’s the state of 
the case.” 

What could Clennam say after this? 
His retiring character included a great 
deal that was simple in the best sense, 
because unpractised and unused ; and, 
in his simplicity and modesty, he could 
only say that he was happy to place 
himself at Mr. Gowan’s disposal. Ac- 
cordingly he said it, and the day was 
fixed. And a dreaded day it was on his 
part, and a very unwelcome day when 
it came, and they went down to Hamp- 
ton Court together. 

The venerable inhabitants of that 
venerable pile seemed, in those times, 
to be encamped there like a sort of civ- 
ilized gypsies. There was a temporary 
air about their establishments, as if they 
were going away the moment they could 
get anything better ; there was also a 
dissatisfied air about themselves, as if 
they took it very ill that they had not al- 
ready got something much better. Gen- 
teel blinds and makeshifts were more J 
or less observable as soon as their doors " 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


181 


were opened ; screens not half high 
enough, which made dining-rooms out 
of arched passages, and warded off ob- 
scure corners where footboys slept at 
night with their heads among the knives 
and forks ; curtains which called upon 
you to believe that they did n’t hide 
anything ; panes of glass which request- 
ed you not to see them ; many objects 
of various forms, feigning to have no 
connection with their guilty secret, a 
bed ; disguised traps in walls, which 
were clearly coal-cellars ; affectations of 
no thoroughfares, which were evidently 
doors to little kitchens. Mental reser- 
vations and artful mysteries grew out of 
these things. Callers, looking steadily 
into the eyes of their receivers, pretend- 
ed not to smell cooking three feet off; 
people, confronting closets accidentally 
left open, pretended not to see bottles ; 
visitors, with their heads against a par- 
tition of thin canvas and a page and a 
young female at high words on the oth- 
er side, made believe to be sitting in a 
primeval silence. There was no end to 
the small social accommodation-bills of 
this nature which the gypsies of gentility 
were constantly drawing upon, and ac- 
cepting for, one another. 

Some of these Bohemians were of an 
irritable temperament, as constantly 
soured and vexed by two mental trials ; 
the first, the consciousness that they 
had never got enough out of the public ; 
the second, the consciousness that the 
public were admitted into the building. 
Under the latter great wrong, a few suf- 
fered dreadfully, — particularly on Sun- 
days, when they had for some time ex- 
pected the earth to open and swallow 
the public up ; but which desirable 
event had not yet occurred, in conse- 
quence of some reprehensible laxity in 
the arrangements of the Universe. 

Mrs. Gowan’s door was attended by 
a family servant of several years’ stand- 
ing, who had his own crow to pluck 
with the public, concerning a situation 
in the post-office which he had been 
for some time expecting, and to which 
he was not yet appointed. He perfect- 
ly knew that the public could never 
have got him in, but he grimly gratified 
himself with the idea that the public 
kept him out. Under the influence of 


this injury (and perhaps of some little 
straitness and irregularity in the matter 
of wages), he had grown neglectful of 
his person and morose in mind ; and 
now beholding in Clennam one of the 
degraded body of his oppressors, re- 
ceived him with ignominy. 

Mrs. Gowan, however, received him 
with condescension. He found her a 
courtly old lady, formerly a Beauty, 
and still sufficiently well-favored to have 
dispensed with the powder on her nose, 
and a certain impossible bloom under 
each eye. She was a little lofty with 
him ; so was another old lady, dark- 
browed and high-nosed, and who must 
have had something real about her or 
she could not have existed, but it was 
certainly not her hair or her teeth or 
her figure or her complexion ; so was 
a gray old gentleman of dignified and 
sullen appearance ; both of whom had 
come to dinner. But, as they had all 
been in the British Embassy way in 
sundry parts of the earth, and as a 
British Embassy cannot better establish 
a character with the Circumlocution 
Office than by treating its compatriots 
with illimitable contempt (else it would 
become like the Embassies of other 
countries), Clennam felt that on the 
whole they let him off lightly. 

The dignified old gentleman turned 
out to be Lord Lancaster Stiltstalking, 
who had been maintained by the Cir- 
cumlocution Office for many years as 
a representative of the Britannic Maj- 
esty abroad. This noble Refrigerator 
had iced several European courts in his 
time, and had done it with such com- 
plete success that the very name of Eng- 
lishman yet struck cold to the stom- 
achs of foreigners who had the dis- 
tinguished honor of remembering him 
at a distance of a quarter of a cen- 
tury. 

He was now in retirement, and hence 
(in a ponderous white cravat, like a 
stiff snow-drift) was so obliging as to 
shade the dinner. There was a whis- 
per of the pervading Bohemian charac- 
ter in the nomadic nature of the service, 
and its curious races of plates and dish- 
es ; but the noble Refrigerator, infinite- 
ly better than plate or porcelain, made 
it superb. He shaded the dinner, 


182 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


cooled the wines, chilled the gravy, and 
blighted the vegetables. 

There was only one other person in 
the room, — a microscopically small foot- 
boy, who waited on the malevolent man 
who had n’t got into the post-office. 
Even this youth, if his jacket could have 
been unbuttoned and his heart laid bare, 
would have been seen, as a distant ad- 
herent of the Barnacle family, already 
to aspire to a situation under govern- 
ment. 

Mrs. Gowan, with a gentle melan- 
choly upon her, occasioned by her son’s 
being reduced to court the swinish pub- 
lic as a follower of the low arts, instead 
of asserting his birthright and putting 
a ring through its nose as an acknowl- 
edged Barnacle, headed the conversa- 
tion at dinner on the evil days. It was 
then that Clennam learned for the first 
time what little pivots this great world 
goes round upon. 

“If John Barnacle,” said Mrs. Gow- 
an, after the degeneracy of the times 
had been fully ascertained, — “if John 
Barnacle had but abandoned his most 
unfortunate idea of conciliating the 
mob, all would have been well, and I 
think the country would have been pre- 
served.” 

The old lady with the high nose as- 
sented, but added that if Augustus 
Stiltstalking had in a general way or- 
dered the cavalry out with instructions 
to charge, she thought the country 
would have been preserved. 

The noble Refrigerator assented, but 
added, that if William Barnacle and Tu- 
dor Stiltstalking, when they came over 
to one another and formed their ever- 
memorable coalition, had boldly muz- 
zled the newspapers, and rendered it 
penal for any editor-person to presume 
to discuss the conduct of any appointed 
authority abroad or at home, he thought 
the country would have been preserved. 

It was agreed that the country (anoth- 
er word for the Barnacles and Stilt- 
stalkings) wanted preserving, but how 
it came to want preserving was not so 
clear. It was only clear that the ques- 
tion was all about John Barnacle, Au- 
gustus Stiltstalking, William Barnacle, 
and Tudor Stiltstalking, Tom, Dick, or 
Harry Barnacle or Stiltstalking, be- 


cause there was nobody else but mob. 
And this was the feature of the conver- 
sation which impressed Clennam, as a 
man not used to it, very disagreeably ; 
making him doubt if it were quite right 
to sit there silently hearing a great na- 
tion narrowed to such little bounds. 
Remembering, however, that in the 
Parliamentary debates, whether on the 
life of that nation’s body or the life of 
its soul, the question was usually all 
about and between John Barnacle, 
Augustus Stiltstalking, William Barna- 
cle, and Tudor Stiltstalking, Tom, Dick, 
or Harry Barnacle or Stiltstalking, and 
nobody else, he said nothing on the 
part of mob, bethinking himself that 
mob was used to it. 

Mr. Henry Gowan seemed to have a 
malicious pleasure in playing off the 
three talkers against each other, and in 
seeing Clennam startled by what they 
said. Having as supreme a contempt 
for the class that had throwm him off as 
for the class that had not taken him on, 
he had no personal disquiet in anything 
that passed. His healthy state of mind 
appeared even to derive a gratification 
from Clennam’s position of embarrass- 
ment and isolation among the good 
company ; and if Clennam had been in 
that condition with which Nobody was 
incessantly contending, he would have 
suspected it, and would have struggled 
with the suspicion as a meanness, even 
while he sat at the table. 

In the course of a couple of hours the 
noble Refrigerator, at no time less than 
a hundred years behind the period, got 
about five centuries in arrear, and de- 
livered solemn political oracles appro- 
priate to that epoch. He finished by 
freezing a cup of tea for his own drink- 
ing, and retiring at his lowest tempera- 
ture. 

Then Mrs. Gowan, w-ho had been ac- 
customed in her days of state to retain 
a vacant arm-chair beside her to which 
to summon her devoted slaves, one by 
one, for short audiences as marks of 
her especial favor, invited Clennam, 
w'ith a turn of her fan, to approach the 
presence. He obeyed, and took the 
tripod recently vacated by Lord Lan- 
caster Stiltstalking. 

“ Mr. Clennam,” said Mrs. Gowan, j 






LITTLE DORRIT. 


1S3 


“apart from the happiness I have in 
becoming known to you, though in this 
odiously inconvenient place, — a mere 
barrack, — there is a subject on which 
I am dying to speak to you. It is the 
subject in connection with which my 
son first had, I believe, the pleasure of 
cultivating your acquaintance.” 

Clennam inclined his head as a gen- 
erally suitable reply to what he did not 
yet quite understand. 

“ First,” said Mrs. Go wan, “now is 
she really pretty?” 

In nobody’s difficulties, he would 
have found it very difficult to answer; 
very difficult indeed to smile, and say, 
“ Who?” 

“ Oh ! You know ! ” she returned. 
This flame of Henry’s. This unfortu- 
nate fancy. There ! If it is a point of 
honor that I should originate the name, 
— Miss Mickles — Miggles.” 

“ Miss Meagles,” said Clennam, “ is 
very beautiful.” 

“ Men are so often mistaken on those 
points,” returned Mrs. Gowan, shaking 
her head, “ that I candidly confess to 
you I feel anything but sure of it even 
now ; though it is something to have 
Henry corroborated with so much grav- 
ity and emphasis. He picked the peo- 
ple up at Rome, I think ? ” 

The phrase would have given nobody 
mortal offence. Clennam replied, “ Ex- 
cuse me, I doubt if I understand your 
expression.” 

“ Picked the people up,” said Mrs. 
Gowan, tapping the sticks of her closed 
fan (a large green one, which she used 
as a hand-screen) upon her little table. 
“ Came upon them. Found them out. 
Stumbled against them.” 

“The people?” 

“Yes. The Miggles people.” 

“ I really cannot say,” said Clennam, 
“where my friend Mr. Meagles first 
presented Mr. Henry Gowan to his 
daughter.” 

“ I am pretty sure he picked her up 
at Rome ; but never mind where, — 
somewhere. Now (this is entirely be- 
tween ourselves), is she very plebeian? ” 

“ Really, ma’am,” returned Clennam, 
“ I am so undoubtedly plebeian myself, 
that I do not feel qualified to judge.” 

“Very neat!” said Mrs. Gowan, 


coolly uqfurling her screen. “ Very 
happy ! From which I infer that you 
secretly think her manner equal to her 
looks ? ” 

Clennam, after a moment’s stiffness, 
bowed. 

“ That ’s comforting, and I hope you 
may be right. Did Henry tell me you 
had travelled with them ? ” 

“ I travelled with my friend Mr. 
Meagles, and his wife and daughter, 
during some months.” (Nobody’s 
heart might have been wrung by the 
remembrance.) 

“ Really comforting, because you 
must have had a large experience of 
them. You see, Mr. Clennam, this 
thing has been going on for a long 
time, and I find no improvement in it. 
Therefore to have the opportunity of 
speaking to one so well informed about 
it as yourself is an immense relief to 
me. Quite a boon. Quite a blessing, 

I am sure.” 

“Pardon me,” returned Clennam, 
“but I am not in Mr. Henry Gowan’s 
confidence. I am far from being so 
well informed as you suppose me to be. 
Your mistake makes my position a very 
delicate one. No word on this topic 
has ever passed between Mr. Henry 
Gowan and myself.” 

Mrs. Gowan glanced at the other 
end of the room, where her son was 
playing £carte, on a sofa, with the old 
lady who was for a charge of cavalry. 

“ Not in his confidence ? No,” said 
Mrs. Gowan. “ No word has passed 
between you? No. That I can im- 
agine. But there are unexpressed con- 
fidences, Mr. Clennam ; and as you 
have been together intimately among 
these people, I cannot doubt that a 
confidence of that sort exists in the 
present case. Perhaps you have heard 
that I have suffered the keenest distress 
of mind from Henry’s having taken to 
a pursuit which — well ! ” shrugging her 
shoulders, “ a very respectable pursuit, 
I dare say, and some artists are, as 
artists, quite superior persons ; still, we 
never yet in our family have gone be- 
yond an Amateur, and it is a pardonable 
weakness to feel a little — ” 

As Mrs. Gowan broke off to heave a 
sigh, Clennam, however resolute to be 


184 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


magnanimous, could not keep down the 
thought that there was mighty little dan- 
ger of the family’s ever going beyond an 
Amateur, even as it was. 

“Henry,” the mother resumed, “is 
self-willed and resolute ; and as these 
people naturally strain every nerve to 
catch him, I can entertain veiy little 
hope, Mr. Clennam, that the thing will 
be broken off. I apprehend the girl’s 
fortune will be very small ; Henry might 
have done much better ; there is scarce- 
ly anything to compensate for the con- 
nection : still, he acts for himself ; and 
if I find no improvement within a short 
time, I see no other course than to re- 
sign myself, and make the best of these 
people. I am infinitely obliged to you 
for what you have told me.” 

As she shrugged her shoulders, Clen- 
nam stiffly bowed again. With an un- 
easy flush upon his face, and hesita- 
tion in his manner, he then said, in a 
still lower tone than he had adopted 
yet, — 

“Mrs. Gowan, I scarcely know how 
to acquit myself of what I feel to be a 
duty, and yet I must ask you for your 
kind consideration in attempting to dis- 
charge it. A misconception on your 
part, a very great misconception, if I 
may venture to call it so, seems to re- 
quire setting right. You have sup- 
posed Mr. Meagles and his family to 
strain every nerve, I think you said — ” 

“Every nerve,” repeated Mrs. Gow- 
an, looking at him in calm obstinacy, 
with her green fan between her face and 
the fire. 

“ — To secure Mr. Henry Gowan ? ” 

The lady placidly assented. 

“ Now that is so far,” said Arthur, 
“ from being the case, that I know Mr. 
Meagles to be unhappy in this matter; 
and to have interposed all reasonable 
obstacles, with the hope of putting an 
end to it.” 

Mrs. Gowan shut up her great green 
fan, tapped him on the arm with it, 
and tapped her smiling lips. “ Why, 
of course,” said she. “Just what I 
mean.” 

Arthur watched her face for some ex- 
planation of what she did mean. 

“Are you really serious, Mr. Clen- 
nam ? Don’t you see ? ” 


Arthur did not see ; and said so. 

“Why, don’t I know my son, and 
don’t I know that this is exactly the 
way to hold him?” said Mrs. Gowan, 
contemptuously; “and do not these 
Miggles people know it at least as well 
as I ? O, shrewd people, Mr. Clen- 
nam ; evidently people of business ! I 
believe Miggles belonged to a Bank. 
It ought to have been a very profitable 
Bank, if he had much to do with its 
management. This is very well done, 
indeed.” 

“ I beg and entreat you, ma’am — ” 
Arthur interposed. 

“ O Mr. Clennam, can you really be 
so credulous ! ” 

It made such a painful impression 
upon him to hear her talking in this 
haughty tone, and to see her patting 
her contemptuous lips with her fan, 
that he said, very earnestly, “Believe 
me, ma’am, this is unjust, a perfectly 
groundless suspicion.” 

“ Suspicion ? ” repeated Mrs. Gowan ; 
“not suspicion, Mr. Clennam, — certain- 
ty. It is very knowingly done indeed, 
and seems to have taken you in com- 
pletely.” She laughed ; and again sat 
tapping her lips with her fan, and toss- 
ing her head, as if she added, “Don’t 
tell me. I know such people will do 
anything for the honor of such an alli- 
ance.” 

At this opportune moment, the cards 
were thrown up, and Mr. Henry Gowan 
came across the room, saying, “ Mother, 
if you can spare Mr. Clennam for this 
time, we have a long way to go, and 
it ’s getting late.” Mr. Clennam there- 
upon rose, as he had no choice but to 
do; and Mrs. Gowan showed him, to 
the last, the same look and the same 
tapped contemptuous lips. 

“You have had a portentously long 
audience of my mother,” said Gow- 
an, as the door closed upon them. 
“ I fervently hope she has not bored 
you ? ” 

“ Not at all,” said Clennam. 

They had a little open phaeton for 
thejourney, and were soon in it on the 
road home. Gowan, driving, lighted a 
cigar ; Clennam declined one. Do 
what he would, he fell into such a mood 
of abstraction, that Gowan said again, 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


185 


“ I am very much afraid my mother 
has bored you ? ” To which he roused 
himself to answer, “Not at all” ; and 
soon relapsed again. 

In that state of mind which rendered 
nobody uneasy, his thoughtfulness 
would have turned principally on the 
man at his side. He would have 
thought of the morning when he first 
saw him rooting out the stones with his 
heel, and would have asked himself, 
“ Does he jerk me out of the path in 
the same careless, cruel way ? ” He 
would have thought, had this introduc- 
tion to his mother been brought about 
by him because he knew what she 
would say, and that he could thus place 
his position before a rival and loftily 
warn him off, without himself reposing 
a word of confidence in him? He 
would have thought, even if there were 
no such design as that, had he brought 
him there to play with his repressed 
emotions, and torment him ? The cur- 
rent of these meditations would have 
been stayed sometimes by a rush of 
shame, bearing a remonstrance to him- 
self from his own open nature, repre- 
senting that to shelter such suspicions, 
even for the passing moment, was not 
to hold the high, unenvious course he 
had resolved to keep. At those times, 
the striving within him would have 
been hardest ; and looking up, and 
catching Gowan’s eyes, he would have 
started as if he had done him an in- 
jury. 

Then, looking at the dark road and 
its uncertain objects, he would have 
gradually trailed off again into thinking, 
“Where are we driving, he and I, I 
wonder, on the darker road of life? 
How will it be with us, and with her, 
in the obscure distance?” Thinking 
of her, he would have been troubled 
anew with a reproachful misgiving that 
it was not even loyal to her to dislike 
hjm, and that in being so easily preju- 
diced against him he was less deserving 
of her than at first. 

“ You are evidently out of spirits,” 
said Gowan ; “ I am very much afraid 
my mother must have bored you dread- 
fully.” 

“ Believe me, not at all,” said Clen- 
nam. “ It ’s nothing, — nothing ! ” 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

FIVE-AND-TWENTY. 

A frequently recurring doubt, 
whether Mr. Pancks’s desire to collect 
information relative to the Dorrit fam- 
ily could have any possible bearing on 
the misgivings he had imparted to his 
mother on his return from his long exile, 
caused Arthur Clennam much uneasi- 
ness at this period. What Mr. Pancks 
already knew about the Dorrit family, 
what more he really wanted to find out, 
and why he should trouble his busy 
head about them at all, were questions 
that often perplexed him. Mr. Pancks 
was not a man to waste his time and 
trouble in researches prompted by idle 
curiosity. That he had a specific ob- 
ject, Clennam could not doubt. And 
whether the attainment of that object by 
Mr. Pancks’s industry might bring to 
light, in some untimely way, secret rea- 
sons which had induced his mother to 
take Little Dorrit by the hand, was a 
serious speculation. 

Not that he ever wavered, either in 
his desire or his determination to re- 
pair a wrong that had been done in his 
father’s time, should a wrong come to 
light, and be reparable. The shadow 
of a supposed act of injustice, which 
had hung over him since his father’s 
death, was so vague and formless that 
it might be the result of a reality wudely 
remote from his idea of it. But if his 
apprehensions should prove to be well 
founded, he was ready at any moment 
to lay down all he had, and begin the 
world anew. As the fierce dark teach- 
ing of his childhood had never sunk 
into his heart, so the first article in 
his code of morals was, that he must 
begin in practical humility, with look- 
ing well to his feet on Earth, and that he 
could never mount on wings of words 
to Heaven. Duty on earth, restitution 
on earth, action on earth; these first, 
as the first steep steps upward. Strait 
was the gate and narrow was the way ; 
far straiter and narrower than the 
broad high-road paved with vain pro- 
fessions and vain repetitions, motes 
from other men’s eyes and liberal de- 
livery of others to the judgment, — all 


1 86 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


cheap materials, costing absolutely 
nothing. 

No. It was not a selfish fear or 
hesitation that rendered him uneasy, 
but a mistrust lest Pancks might not 
observe his part of the understanding 
between them, and, making any dis- 
covery, might take some course upon 
it without imparting it to him. On the 
other hand, when he recalled his con- 
versation with Pancks, and the little 
reason he had to suppose that there 
was any likelihood of that strange per- 
sonage being on that track at all, there 
were times when he wondered that he 
made so much of it. Laboring in this 
sea, as all barks labor in cross-seas, 
he tossed about, and came to no haven. 

The removal of Little Dorrit her- 
self from their customary association 
did not mend the matter. She was so 
much out, and so much in her own 
room, that he began to miss her and to 
find a blank in her place. He had 
written to her to inquire if she were bet- 
ter, and she had written back, very grate- 
fully and earnestly, telling him not to be 
uneasy on her behalf, for she was quite 
well ; but he had not seen her for what, 
in their intercourse, was a long time. 

He returned home one evening from 
an interview with her father, who had 
mentioned that she was out visiting, — 
which was what he always said, when 
she was hard at work to buy his supper, 
— and found Mr. Meagles in an excited 
state walking up and down his room. 
On his opening the door, Mr. Meagles 
stopped, faced round, and said, — 

“ Clennam ! — Tattycoram ! ” 

“ What ’s the matter ? ” 

“ Lost ! ” 

“ Why, bless my heart alive ! ” cried 
Clennam, in amazement. “ What do 
you mean ? ” 

“Wouldn’t count five-and-twenty, 
sir; couldn’t be got to do it ; stopped 
at eight, and took herself off.” 

“ Left your house ? ” 

“Never to come back,” said Mr. 
Meagles, shaking his head. “You 
don’t know that girl’s passionate and 
proud character. A team of horses 
could n’t draw her back now ; the bolts 
and bars of the old Bastille could n’t 
keep her.” 


“ How did it happen ? Pray sit down 
and tell me.” 

“ As to how it happened, it ’s not so 
easy to relate ; because you must have 
the unfortunate temperament of the poor 
impetuous girl herself, before you can 
fully understand it. But it came about 
in this way. Pet and mother and I have 
been having a good deal of talk togeth- 
er of late. I ’ll not disguise from you, 
Clennam, that those conversations have 
not been of as bright a kind as I could 
wish ; they have referred to our going 
away again. In proposing to do which, 
I have had, in fact, an object.” 

Nobody’s heart beat quickly. 

“ An object,” said Mr. Meagles, after 
a moment’s pause, “that I will not 
disguise from you, either, Clennam. 
There ’s an inclination on the part of 
my dear child which I am sorry for. 
Perhaps you guess the person. Henry 
Gowan.” 

“ I was not unprepared to hear it.” 

“Well! ’’said Mr. Meagles, with a 
heavy sigh, “ I wish to God you had 
never had to hear it. However, so it 

is. Mother and I have done all we 
could to get the better of it, Clennam. 
We have tried tender advice, we have 
tried time, we have tried absence. As 

et, of no use. Our late conversations 
ave been upon the subject of going 
away for another year at least, in order 
that there might be an entire separation 
and breaking off for that term. Upon 
that question, Pet has been unhappy, 
and therefore mother and I have been 
unhappy.” 

Clennam said that he could easily 
believe it. 

“Well ! ” continued Mr. Meagles, in 
an apologetic way, “ I admit as a prac- 
tical man, and I am sure mother would 
admit as a practical woman, that we do, 
in families, magnify our troubles and 
make mountains of our molehills, in a 
way that is calculated to be rather trying 
to people who look on, — to mere out- 
siders, you know, Clennam. Still, Pet’s 
happiness or unhappiness is quite alife- 
or-death question with us ; and we may 
be excused, I hope, for making much of 

it. At all events, it might have been 
borne by Tattycoram. Now, don’t you 
think so ? ” 



LITTLE DORRIT. 


187 


“ I do indeed think so,” returned 
Clennam, in most emphatic recognition 
of this very moderate expectation. 

“No, sir,” said Mr. Meagles, shak- 
ing his head ruefully. “ She could n’t 
stand it. The chafing and firing of that 
girl, the wearing and tearing of that girl 
within her own breast, has been such 
that I have softly said to her again and 
again in passing her, ‘ Five-and-twenty, 
Tattycoram, five-and-twenty ! ’ I hearti- 
ly wish she could have gone on count- 
ing five-and-twenty day and night, and 
then it would n’t have happened.” 

Mr. Meagles, with a despondent coun- 
tenance in which the goodness of his 
heart was even more expressed than in 
his times of cheerfulness and gayety, 
stroked his face down from his forehead 
to his chin, and shook his head again. 

“ I said to mother (not that it was 
necessary, for she would have thought 
it all for herself), we are practical peo- 
ple, my dear, and we know her story ; 
we see, in this unhappy girl, some re- 
flection of what was raging in her moth- 
er’s heart before ever such a creature as 
this poor thing was in the world ; we ’ll 
gloss her temper over, mother, we won’t 
notice it at present, my dear, we ’ll take 
advantage of some better disposition in 
her, another time. So we said nothing. 
But, do what we would, it seems as if it 
was to be ; she broke out violently one 
night.” 

“ How, and why?” 

“ If you ask me why,” said Mr. 
Meagles, a little disturbed by the ques- 
tion, for he was far more intent on soft- 
ening her case than the family’s, “ I 
can only refer you to what I have just 
repeated as having been pretty near my 
words to mother. As to how, we had 
said good night to Pet in her presence 
(very affectionately, I must allow), and 
she had attended Pet up stairs, — you 
remember she was her maid. Perhaps 
Pet, having been out of sorts, may have 
been a little more inconsiderate than 
usual in requiring services of her ; but I 
don’t know that I have any right to say 
so ; she was always thoughtful and gen- 

“ The gentlest mistress in the world.” 

“ Thank you, Clennam,” said Mr. 
Meagles, shaking him by the hand ; 


“you have often seen them together. 
Well ! We presently heard this unfor- 
tunate Tattycoram loud and angry, and 
before we could ask what was the 
matter, Pet came back in a tremble, 
saying she was frightened of her. Close 
after her came Tattycoram, in a flaming 
rage. ‘ I hate you all three,’ says she, 
stamping her foot at us. ‘ I am burst- 
ing with hate of the whole house.’ ” 

“ Upon which you — ? ” 

“ I ? ” said Mr. Meagles, with a plain 
good faith that might have commanded 
the belief of Mrs. Gowan herself, — “I 
said, Count five-and-twenty, Tattyco- 
ram.” 

Mr. Meagles again stroked his face 
and shook his head, with an air of pro- 
found regret. 

“ She was so used to do it, Clennam, 
that even then, such a picture of pas- 
sion as you never saw, she stopped 
short, looked me full in the face, and 
counted (as I made out) to eight. But 
she could n’t control herself to go any 
further. There she broke down, poor 
thing, and gave the other seventeen to 
the four winds. Then it all burst out. 
She detested us, she was miserable with 
us, she could n’t bear it, she would n’t 
bear it, she was determined to go away. 
She was younger than her young mis- 
tress, and would she remain to see her 
always held up as the only creature 
who was young and interesting, and 
to be cherished and loved? No. She 
would n’t, she would n’t, she would n’t ! 
What did we think she, Tattycoram, 
might have been if she had been ca- 
ressed and cared for in her childhood, 
like her young mistress ? As good as 
her ? Ah ! Perhaps fifty times as 
good. When we pretended to be so 
fond of one another, we exulted over 
her ; that was what we did ; we exulted 
over her, and shamed her. And all in the 
house did the same. They talked about 
their fathers and mothers, and brothers 
and sisters ; they liked to drag them 
up, before her face. There was Mrs. 
Tickit, only yesterday, when her little 
grandchild was with her, had been 
amused by the child’s trying to call her 
(Tattycoram) by the wretched name 
we gave her ; and had laughed at 
the name. Why, who did n’t ; and 


1 88 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


who were we that we should have a 
right to name her like a dog or a cat ? 
But she did n’t care. She would take 
no more benefits from us ; she would 
fling us her name back again, and she 
would go. She would leave us that 
minute, nobody should stop her, and we 
should never hear of her again.” 

Mr. Meagles had recited all this with 
such a vivid remembrance of his origi- 
nal, that he was almost as flushed and 
hot by this time as he described her to 
have been. 

“ Ah, well ! ” he said, wiping his 
face. “ It was of no use trying reason 
then, with that vehement panting crea- 
ture (Heaven knows what her mother’s 
story must have been) ; so I quietly 
told her that she should not go at that 
late hour of night, and I gave her my 
hand and took her to her room, and 
locked the house doors. But she was 
gone this morning.” 

“ And you know no more of her?” 

“ No more,” returned Mr. Meagles. 
“ I have been hunting about all day. 
She must have gone very early and 
very silently. I have found no trace of 
her, down about us.” 

“Stay! You want,” said Clennam, 
after a moment’s reflection, “ to see her? 
I assume that ? ” 

“ Yes, assuredly ; I want to give her 
another chance ; mother and Pet want 
to give her another chance ; come ! 
You yourself,” said Mr. Meagles, per- 
suasively, as if the provocation to be 
angry were not his own at all, “ want to 
give the poor passionate girl another 
chance, I know, Clennam.” 

“ It would be strange and hard indeed 
if I did not,” said Clennam, “when you 
are all so forgiving. What I was going 
to ask you was, have you thought of 
that Miss Wade?” 

“ I have. I did not think of her until 
I had pervaded the whole of our neigh- 
borhood, and I don’t know that I should 
have done so then, but for finding 
mother and Pet, when I went home, 
full of the idea that Tattycoram must 
have gone to her. Then, of course, I 
recalled what she said that day at din- 
ner when you were first with us.” 

“ Have you any idea where Miss 
Wade is to be found?” 


“ To tell you the truth,” returned 
Mr. Meagles, “it’s because I have an 
addled jumble of a notion on that sub- 
ject, that you found me waiting here. 
There is one of those odd impressions 
in my house which do mysteriously get 
into houses sometimes, which nobody 
seems to have picked up in a distinct 
form from anybody, and yet which 
everybody seems to have got hold of 
loosely from somebody and let go again, 
that she lives, or was living, there- 
abouts.” Mr. Meagles handed him a 
slip of paper, on which was written the 
name of one of the dull by-streets in the 
Grosvenor region, near Park Lane. 

“ Here is no number,” said Arthur, 
looking over it. 

“No number, my dear Clennam?” 
returned his friend. “ No anything ! 
The very name of the street may have 
been floating in the air, for, as I tell 
you, none of my people can say where 
they got it from. However, it ’s worth 
an inquiry ; and as I would rather 
make it in company than alone, and as 
you too were a fellow-traveller of that 
immovable woman’s, I thought per- 
haps — Clennam finished the sen- 
tence for him by taking up his hat 
again, and saying he was ready. 

It was now summer-time ; a gray, hot, 
dusty evening. They rode to the top 
of Oxford Street, and there alighting, 
dived in among the great streets of 
melancholy stateliness, and the little 
streets that try to be as stately and suc- 
ceed in being more melancholy, of which 
there is a labyrinth near Park Lane. 
Wildernesses of corner houses, with 
barbarous old porticos and appurte- 
nances ; horrors that came into exist- 
ence under some wrong-headed person 
in some wrong-headed time, still de- 
manding the blind admiration of all 
ensuing generations, and determined to 
do so until they tumbled down ; frowned 
upon the twilight. Parasite little tene- 
ments with the cramp in their whole 
frame, from the dwarf hall door on the 
giant model of His Grace’s in the 
Square, to the squeezed window of the 
boudoir commanding the dunghills in 
the Mew T s, made the evening doleful. 
Rickety dwellings of undoubted fash- 
ion, but of a capacity to hold nothing 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


189 


comfortably except a dismal smell, 
looked like the last result of the great 
mansions’ breeding in - and - in ; and, 
where their little supplementary bows 
and balconies were supported on thin 
iron columns, seemed to be scrofulously 
resting upon crutches. Here and there 
a Hatchment, with the whole science of 
Heraldry in it, loomed down upon the 
street, like an Archbishop discoursing 
on Vanity. The shops, few in number, 
made no show ; for popular opinion 
w r as as nothing to them. The pastry- 
cook knew who was on his books, and 
in that knowledge could be calm, with 
a few glass cylinders of dowager pep- 
permint-drops in his window, and half 
a dozen ancient specimens of currant 
jelly. A few oranges formed the green- 
grocer’s whole concession to the vulgar 
mind. A single basket made of moss, 
once containing plovers’ eggs, held all 
that the poulterer had to say to the 
rabble. Everybody in those streets 
seemed (which is always the case at 
that hour and season) to be gone out to 
dinner, and nobody seemed to be giving 
the dinners they had gone to. On the 
doorsteps there were lounging footmen, 
with bright party-colored plumage and 
white polls, like an extinct race of mon- 
strous birds ; and butlers, solitary men 
of recluse demeanor, each of whom 
appeared distrustful of all other butlers. 
The roll of carriages in the Park was 
done for the day ; the street lamps were 
lighting ; and wicked little grooms in 
the tightest-fitting garments, with twists 
in their legs answering to the twists in 
their minds, hung about in pairs, chew- 
ing straws and exchanging fraudulent 
secrets. The spotted dogs who went 
out with the carriages, and who were 
so associated with splendid equipages, 
that it looked like a condescension in 
those animals to come out without them, 
accompanied helpers to and fro on 
messages. Here and there was a retir- 
ing public-house which did not require 
to be supported on the shoulders of the 
people, and where gentlemen out of 
livery were not much wanted. 

This last discovery was made by the 
two friends in pursuing their inquiries. 
Nothing was there, or anywhere, known 
of such a person as Miss Wade, in con- 


nection with the street they sought. 
It was one of the parasite streets ; long, 
regular, narrow, dull, and gloomy, like 
a brick-and-mortar funeral. They in- 
quired at several little area gates, where 
a dejected youth stood spiking his chin 
on the summit of a precipitous little 
shoot of wooden steps, but could gain 
no information. They walked up the 
street on one side of the way, and down 
it on the other, what time two vocifer- 
ous news-sellers, announcing an extraor- 
dinary event that had never happened 
and never would happen, pitched their 
hoarse voices into the secret chambers ; 
but nothing came of it. At length they 
stood at the corner from which they had 
begun, and it had fallen quite dark, and 
they were no wiser. 

It happened that in the street they 
had several times passed a dingy house, 
apparently empty, with bills in the win- 
dows, announcing that it was to let. 
The bills, as a variety in the funeral 
procession, almost amounted to a dec- 
oration. Perhaps because they kept 
the house separate in his mind, or per- 
haps because Mr. Meagles and himself 
had twice agreed in passing, “It is 
clear she don’t live there,” Clennam 
now proposed that they should go back 
and try that house before finally going 
away. Mr. Meagles agreed, and back 
they went. 

They knocked once, and they rang 
once, without any response. “ Emp- 
ty,” said Mr. Meagles, listening. 
“ Once more,” said Clennam, and 
knocked again. After that knock they 
heard a movement below, and some- 
body shuffling up towards the door. 

The confined entrance was so dark, 
that it was impossible to make out dis- 
tinctly what kind of person opened the 
door ; but it appeared to be an old wo- 
man. “ Excuse our troubling you,” 
said Clennam. “ Pray, can you tell us 
where Miss Wade lives?” The voice 
in the darkness unexpectedly replied, 
“ Lives here.” 

“ Is she at home ? ” 

No answer coming, Mr. Meagles 
asked again, “ Pray, is she at home? ” 

After another delay, “ I suppose she 
is,” said the voice, abruptly ; “you had 
better come in, and I ’ll ask.” 


190 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


They were summarily shut into the 
close black house ; and the figure rus- 
tling away, and speaking from a higher 
level, said, “ Come up, if you please ; 
you can’t tumble over anything.” They 
groped their way up stairs towards a 
faint light, which proved to be the light 
of the street shining through a window ; 
and the figure left them shut up in an 
airless room. 

“ This is odd, Clennam,” said Mr. 
Meagles, softly. 

“ Odd enough,” assented Clennam, in 
the same tone, “ but we have succeed- 
ed ; that ’s the main point. Here ’s a 
light coming ! ” 

The light was a lamp, and the bearer 
was an old woman, very dirty, very 
wrinkled and dry. “ She ’s at home,” 
she said (and the voice was the same 
that had spoken before) ; “ she ’ll come 
directly.” Having set the lamp down 
on the table, the old woman dusted her 
hands on her apron, which she might 
have done forever without cleaning 
them, looked at the visitors with a dim 
pair of eyes, and backed out. 

The lady whom they had come to see, 
if she were the present occupant of the 
house, appeared to have taken up her 
quarters there, as she might have es- 
tablished herself in an Eastern caravan- 
serai. A small square of carpet in the 
middle of the room, a few articles of 
furniture that evidently did not belong 
to the room, and a disorder of trunks 
and travelling articles, formed the whole 
of her surroundings. Under some for- 
mer regular inhabitant, the stifling lit- 
tle apartment had broken out into a pier- 
glass and a gilt table ; but the gilding 
was as faded as last year’s flowers, and 
the glass was so clouded that it seemed 
to hold in magic preservation all the 
fogs and bad weather it had ever reflect- 
ed. The visitors had had a minute or 
two to look about them, when the door 
opened and Miss Wade came in. 

She was exactly the same as when 
they had parted. Just as handsome, 
just as scornful, just as repressed. She 
manifested no surprise in seeing them, 
nor any other emotion. She requested 
them to be seated ; and, declining to 
take a seat herself, at once anticipated 
any introduction of their business. 


“I apprehend,” she said, “that I 
know the cause of your favoring me with 
this visit. We may come to it at once.” 

“The cause then, ma’am,” said Mr. 
Meagles, “is Tattycoram.” 

“ So I supposed.” 

“ Miss Wade,” said Mr. Meagles, 
“ will you be so kind as to say whether 
you know anything of her ? ” 

“ Surely. I know she is here with 
me.” 

“Then, ma’am,” said Mr. Meagles, 
“ allow me to make known to you that 
I shall be happy to have her back, and 
that my wife and daughter will be happy 
to have her back. She has been with us 
a long time, we don’t forget her claims 
upon us, and I hope we know how to 
make allowances.” 

“You hope you know how to make 
allowances?” she returned, in a level, 
measured voice. “ For what ? ” 

“ I think my friend would say. Miss 
Wade,” Arthur Clennam interposed, 
seeing Mr. Meagles rather at a loss, “ for 
the passionate sense that sometimes 
comes upon the poor girl of being at 
a disadvantage. Which occasionally 
gets the better of better remembrances.” 

The lady broke into a smile, as she 
turned her eyes upon him. “ Indeed ? ” 
was all she answered. 

She stood by the table so perfectly 
composed and still, after this acknowl- 
edgment of his remark, that Mr. Mea- 
gles stared at her under a sort of fascina- 
tion, and could not even look to Clen- 
nam to make another move. After 
waiting, awkwardly enough, for some 
moments, Arthur said, — 

“ Perhaps it would be welt if Mr. 
Meagles could see her, Miss Wade?” 

“That is easily done,” said she. 
“Come here, child.” She had opened 
a door while saying this, and now led 
the girl in by the hand. It was very cu- 
rious to see them standing together ; 
the girl with her disengaged fingers 
plaiting the bosom of her dress, half 
irresolutely, half passionately ; Miss 
Wade with her composed face atten- 
tively regarding her, and suggesting to 
an observer with extraordinary force, in 
her composure itself (as a veil will sug- 
gest the form it covers), the unquench- 
able passion of her own nature. 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


u See here,” she said, in the same lev- 
el way as before. “ Here is your pa- 
tron, your master. He is willing to take 
you back, my dear, if you are sensible 
of the favor and choose to go. You can 
be, again, a foil to his pretty daughter, 
a slave to her pleasant wilfulness, and a 
toy in the house showing the goodness 
of the family. You can have your 
droll name again, playfully pointing you 
out and setting you apart, as it is right 
that you should be pointed out and set 
apart. (Your birth, you know ; you 
must not forget your birth.) You can 
again be shown to this gentleman’s 
daughter, Harriet, and kept before her, 
as a living reminder of her own superi- 
ority and her gracious condescension. 
You can recover all thes£ advantages, 
and many more of the same kind which 
I dare say start up in your memory 
while I speak, and which you lose in 
taking refuge with me, — you can recov- 
er them all, by telling these gentlemen 
how humbled and penitent you are, and 
by going back with them to be forgiven. 
What do you say, Harriet ? Will you 
go?” 

The girl, who, under the influence of 
these words, had gradually risen in an- 
ger and heightened in color, answered, 
raising her lustrous black eyes for the 
moment, and clenching her hand upon 
the folds it had been puckering up, 
“ I ’d die sooner ! ” 

Miss Wade, still standing at her side 
holding her hand, looked quietly round 
and said, with a smile, “ Gentlemen ! 
What do you do upon that?” 

Poor Mr. M eagles’s inexpressible 
consternation in hearing his motives 
and actions so perverted had prevented 
him from interposing any word until 
now ; but now he regained the power 
of speech. 

“ Tattycoram,” said he, for I ’ll call 
you by that name still, my good girl, 
conscious that I meant nothing but 
kindness when I gave it to you, and 
conscious that you know it — ” 

“ I don’t ! ” said she, looking up 
again, and almost rending herself with 
the same busy hand. 

“ No, not now, perhaps,” said Mr. 
Meagles, “ not with that lady’s eyes 
so intent upon you, Tattycoram,” — she 


191 

glanced at them for a moment, — “ and 
that power over you which we see she 
exercises, — not now, perhaps, but at 
another time. Tattycoram, I ’ll not ask 
that lady whether she believes what she 
has said, even in the anger and ill blood 
in which I and my friend here equally 
know she has spoken, though she sub- 
dues herself with a determination that 
any one who has once seen her is not 
likely to forget. I ’ll not ask you, with 
our remembrance of my house and all 
elonging to it, whether you believe it. 
I ’ll only say that you have no profes- 
sion to make to me or mine, and no for- 
giveness to entreat ; and that all in the 
world that I ask you to do is, to count 
five-and-twenty, Tattycoram.” 

She looked at him for an instant, and 
then said, frowningly, “ I won’t. Miss 
Wade, take me away, please.” 

The contention that raged within her 
had no softening in it now ; it was 
wholly between passionate defiance and 
stubborn defiance. Her rich color, her 
quick blood, her rapid breath, were 
all setting themselves against the oppor- 
tunity of retracing her steps. “ I won’t. 
I won’t. I won’t ! ” she repeated in a 
low, thick voice. “ I ’d be torn to pieces 
first. I ’d tear myself to pieces first ! ” 

Miss Wade, who had released her 
hold, laid her hand protectingly on the 
girl’s neck for a moment, and then said, 
looking round with her former smile, 
and speaking exactly in her former tone, 
“ Gentlemen ! What do you do upon 
that?” 

“ O Tattycoram, Tattycoram ! ” cried 
Mr. Meagles, adjuring her besides with 
an earnest hand. “ Hear that lady’s 
voice, look at that lady’s face, consider 
what is in that lady’s heart, and think 
what a future lies before you. My 
child, whatever you may think, that la- 
dy’s influence over you — astonishing 
to us, and I should hardly go too far in 
saying terrible to us, to see — is founded 
in passion fiercer than yours and tem- 
per more violent than yours. What 
can you two be together? What can 
come of it ? ” 

“ I am alone here, gentlemen,” ob- 
served^ Miss Wade, with no change of 
voice or manner. “ Say anything you 
will.” 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


192 

“ Politeness must yield to this mis- 
guided girl, ma’am,” said Mr. Meagles, 
“ at her present pass ; though I hope 
not altogether to dismiss it, even with 
the injury you do her so strongly before 
me. Excuse me for reminding you in 
her hearing — I must say it — that you 
were a mystery to all of us, and had 
nothing in common with any of us, 
when she unfortunately fell in your 
way. I don’t know what you are, but 
you don’t hide, can’t hide, what a dark 
spirit you have within you. If it should 
happen that you are a woman who, 
from whatever cause, has a perverted 
delight in making a sister woman as 
wretched as she is (I am old enough to 
have heard of such), I warn her against 
you, and I warn you against yourself.” 

“ Gentlemen ! ” said Miss Wade, 
calmly. “ When you have concluded 
— Mr. Clennam, perhaps you will in- 
duce your friend — ” 

“Not without another effort,” said 
Mr. Meagles, stoutly. “ Tattycoram, my 
poor, dear girl, count five-and-twenty.” 

“ Do not reject the hope, the certain- 
ty, this kind man offers you,” said 
Clennam, in a low, emphatic voice. 
“ Turn to the friends you have not for- 
gotten. Think once more ! ” 

“ I won’t ! Miss Wade,” said the 
girl, with her bosom swelling high, and 
speaking with her hand held to her 
throat, “ take me away ! ” 

“Tattycoram,” said Mr. Meagles. 
“ Once more yet ! The only thing I 
ask of you in the world, my child ! 
Count five-and-twenty!” 

She put her hands tightly over her 
ears, confusedly tumbling down her 
bright black hair in the vehemence of 
the action, and turned her face reso- 
lutely to the wall. Miss Wade, who 
had watched her under this final appeal 
with that strange attentiye smile, and 
that repressing hand upon her own bo- 
som, with which she had watched her in 
her struggle at Marseilles, then put her 
arm about her waist as if she took pos- 
session of her forevermore. 

And there was a visible triumph in 
her face when she turned it to dismiss 
the visitors. 

“As it is the last time I shall have 
this honor,” she said, “ and as you have 


spoken of not knowing what I am, and 
also of the foundation of my influence 
here, you may now know that it is 
founded in a common cause. What 
your broken plaything is as to birth, I 
am. She has no name, I have no 
name. Her wrong is my wrong. I 
have nothing more to say to you.” 

This was addressed to Mr. Meagles, 
who sorrowfully went out. As Clennam 
followed, she said to him, with the same 
external composure and in the same lev- 
el voice, but with a smile that is only seen 
on cruel faces, — a very faint smile, lift- 
ing the nostril, scarcely touching the lips, 
and not breaking away gradually, but 
instantly dismissed when done with : — 

“ I hope the wife of your dear friend, 
Mr. Gowan, may be happy in the con- 
trast of her e&raction to this girl’s and 
mine, and in the high good-fortune that 
awaits her.” 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 
nobody’s disappearance. 

Not resting satisfied with the en- 
deavors he had made to recover his 
lost charge, Mr. Meagles addressed a 
letter of remonstrance, breathing noth- 
ing but good-will, not only to her, but to 
Miss Wade too. No answer coming to 
these epistles, or to another written to 
the stubborn girl by the hand of her late 
young mistress, which might have melt- 
ed her if anything could (all three let- 
ters were returned weeks afterwards as 
having been refused at the house door), 
he deputed Mrs. Meagles to make the 
experiment of a personal interview. 
That worthy lady being unable to ob- 
tain one, and being steadfastly denied 
admission, Mr. Meagles besought Ar- 
thur to essay once more what he could 
do. All that came of his compliance 
w'as, his discovery that the empty house 
was left in charge of. the old woman, 
that Miss Wade was gone, that the 
waifs and strays of furniture were gone, 
and that the old woman would accept 
any number of half-crowns and thank the 
donor kindly, but had no information 
whatever to exchange for those coins, 
beyond constantly offering for perusal a 


MR. AND MRS. M EAGLES. 








LITTLE DORRIT. 


i93 


memorandum relative to fixtures, which 
the house-agent’s young man had left 
in the hall. 

Unwilling, even under this discom- 
fiture, to resign the ingrate and leave 
her hopeless, in case of her better dis- 
positions obtaining the mastery over 
the darker side of her character, Mr. 
Meagles, for six successive days, pub- 
lished a discreetly covert advertisement 
in the morning papers, to the effect 
that if a certain young person who 
had lately left home without reflection, 
would at any time apply at his address 
at Twickenham, everything .would be 
as it had been before, and no reproach- 
es need be apprehended. The unex- 
pected consequences of this notification 
suggested to the dismayed Mr. Mea- 
gles for the first time that some hun- 
dreds of young persons must be leaving 
their homes without reflection, every 
day ; for shoals of wrong young people 
came down to Twickenham, who, not 
finding themselves received with enthu- 
siasm, generally demanded compensa- 
tion by way of damages, in addition to 
coach-hire there and back. Nor were 
these the only uninvited clients whom 
the advertisement produced. The 
swarm of begging-letter writers who 
would. seem to be always watching ea- 
gerly for any hook, however small, to 
hang a letter upon, wrote to say that, 
having seen the advertisement, they 
were induced to apply with confidence 
for various sums, ranging from ten shil- 
lings to fifty pounds : not because they 
knew anything about the young person, 
but because they felt that to part with 
those donations would greatly relieve the 
advertiser’s mind. Several projectors, 
likewise, availed themselves of the same 
opportunity to correspond with Mr. 
Meagles ; as. for example, to apprise 
him that, their attention having been 
called to the advertisement by a friend, 
they begged to state that if they should 
ever hear anything of the young person, 
they would not fail to make it known to 
him immediately, and that in the mean 
time if he would oblige them with the 
funds necessary for bringing to perfec- 
tion a certain entirely novel description 
of Pump, the happiest results would 
ensue to mankind. 


Mr. Meagles and his family, under 
these combined discouragements, had 
begun reluctantly to give up Tattyco- 
ram as irrecoverable, when the new 
and active firm of Dovce and Clennam, 
in their private capacities, went down 
on a Saturday to stay at the cottage 
until Monday. The senior partner 
took the coach, and the junior partner 
took his walking-stick. 

A tranquil summer sunset shone upon 
him as he approached the end of his 
walk, and passed through the meadows 
by the river-side. He had that sense 
of peace, and of being lightened of a 
weight of care, which country quiet 
awakens in the breasts of dwellers in 
towns. Everything within his view' was 
lovely and placid. The rich foliage of 
the trees, the luxuriant grass diversified 
with wild-flowers, the little green isl- 
ands in the river, the beds of rushes, 
the water-lilies floating' on the surface 
of the stream, the distant voices in 
boats borne musically towards him on 
the ripple of the water and the evening 
air, were all expressive of rest. In the 
occasional leap of a fish, or dip of an 
oar, or twittering of a bird not yet at 
roost, or distant barking of a dog, or 
lowing of a cow, — in all such sounds, 
there was the prevailing breath of rest 
which seemed to encompass him in 
every scent that sweetened the fragrant 
air. The long lines of red and gold in 
the sky, and the glorious track of the 
descending sun, w'ere all divinely calm. 
Upon the purple tree-tops far away, 
and on the green height near at hand 
up which the shades were slowly creep- 
ing, there w'as an equal hush. Between 
the real landscape and its shadow in 
the water, there was no division ; both 
were so untroubled and clear, and, 
while so fraught with solemn mystery 
of life and death, so hopefully reassur- 
ing to the gazer’s soothed heart, be- 
cause so tenderly and mercifully beau- 
tiful. 

Clennam had stopped, not for the first 
time by many times, to look about him 
and suffer, what he saw to sink into his 
soul, as the shadow's, looked at, seemed 
to sink deeper and deeper into the wa- 
ter. He was slowly resuming his way, 
when he saw a figure in the path before 


13 


194 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


him which he had, perhaps, already as- 
sociated with the evening and its im- 
pressions. 

Minnie was there, alone. She had 
some roses in her hand, and seemed to 
have stood still on seeing him, waiting 
for him. Her face was towards him, 
and she appeared to have been coming 
from the opposite direction. There was 
a flutter in her manner which Clennam 
had never seen in it before ; and as he 
came near her, it entered his mind all 
at once that she was there of a set pur- 
pose to speak to him. 

She gave him her hand, and said : 
“ You wonder to see me here by myself? 
But the evening is so lovely, I have 
strolled further than I meant at first. I 
thought it likely I might meet you, and 
that made me more confident. You al- 
ways come this way, do you not? ” 

As Clennam said that it was his fa- 
vorite way, he felt her hand falter on 
his arm, and saw the roses shake. 

“ Will you let me give you one, Mr. 
Clennam ? I gathered them as I came 
out of the garden. Indeed, I almost 
gathered them for you, thinking it so 
likely I might meet you. Mr. Doyce 
arrived more than an hour ago, and told 
us you were walking down.” 

His own hand shook, as he accepted 
a rose or two from hers, and thanked 
her. They were now by an avenue of 
trees. Whether they turned into it on 
his movement or on hers, matters little. 
He never knew how that was. 

“ It is very grave here,” said Clen- 
nam, “ but very pleasant at this hour. 
Passing along this deep shade, and out 
at that arch of light at the other end, 
we come upon the ferry and the cottage 
by the best approach, I think.” 

In her simple garden-hat and her 
light summer dress, with her rich brown 
hair naturally clustering about her, and 
her wonderful eyes raised to his for a 
moment, with a look in which regard for 
him and trustfulness in him were strik- 
ingly blended with a kind of timid sor- 
row for him, she was so beautiful, that it 
was well for his peace, — or ill for his 
peace, he did not quite know which, — 
that he had made that vigorous resolu- 
tion he had so often thought about. 

She broke a momentary silence by 


inquiring if he knew that papa had been 
thinking of another tour abroad? He 
said he had heard it mentioned. She 
broke another momentary silence by 
adding, with some hesitation, that pa- 
pa had abandoned the idea. 

At this, he thought directly, “ They 
are to be married.” 

“Mr. Clennam,” she said, hesitating 
more timidly yet, and speaking so low 
that he bent his head to hear her. “ I 
should very much like to give you my 
confidence, if you would not mind hav- 
ing the goodness to receive it. I should 
have very much liked to have given it 
to you long ago, because — I felt that 
you were becoming so much our 
friend.” 

“ How can I be otherwise than proud 
of it at any time ! Pray give it to me. 
Pray trust me.” 

“ I could never have been afraid of 
trusting you,” she returned, raising her 
eyes frankly to his face. “ I think I 
would have done so some time ago, if I 
had known how. But I scarcely know 
how even now.” 

“ Mr. Gowan,” said Arthur Clennam, 

“ has reason to be very happy. God 
bless his wife and him ! ” 

She wept, as she tried to thank him. 
He reassured her, took her hand as it 
lay with the trembling; roses in it on his 
arm, took the remaining roses from it, 
and put it to his lips. At that time, it 
seemed to him, he first finally resigned 
the dying hope that had flickered in 
nobody’s heart, so much to its pain and 
trouble ; and from that time he became ; 
in his own eyes, as to any similar hope 
or prospect, a very much older man, 
who had done with that part of life. 

He put the roses in his breast and 
they walked on for a little while, slowly 
and silently, under the umbrageous 
trees. Then he asked her, in a voice of 
cheerful kindness, was there anything 
else that she would say to him as her 
friend and her father’s friend, many 
years older than herself ; was there any 
trust she would repose in him, any ser- 
vice she would ask of him, any little aid 
to her happiness that she could give 
him the lasting gratification of believing 
it was in his power to render ? 

She was going to answer, when she 


LITTLE DOER IT. 


was so touched by some little hidden sor- 
row or sympathy — what could it have 
been ? — that she said, bursting into 
tears again : “O Mr. Clennam ! Good, 
generous Mr. Clennam, pray tell me 
you do not blame me.” 

“ I blame you ? ” said Clennam. 
“ My dearest girl ! I blame you ? 
No!” 

After clasping both her hands upon 
his arm, and looking confidentially up 
into his face, with some hurried words 
to the effect that she thanked him from 
her heart (as indeed she did, if it be the 
source of earnestness), she gradually 
composed herself, with now and then 
a word of encouragement from him as 
they walked on slowly and almost si- 
lently under the darkening trees. 

“ And, now, Minnie Gowan,” at 
length, said Clennam, smiling, “ will 
you ask me nothing ? ” 

“ O, I have very much to ask of 
you.” 

“That’s well! I hoped so; I am 
not disappointed.” 

“You know how I am loved at home, 
and how I love home. You can hardly 
think it perhaps, dear Mr. Clennam,” 
she spoke with great agitation, “ seeing 
me going from it of my own free will 
and choice, but I do so dearly love 
it !” 

“ I am sure of that,” said Clennam. 
“ Can you suppose I doubt it ! ” 

“ No, no. But it is strange, even to 
me, that, loving it so much and being so 
much beloved in it, I can bear to cast it 
away. It seems so neglectful of it, so 
unthankful.” 

“ My dear girl,” said Clennam, “ it 
is in the natural progress and change of 
time. All homes are left so.” 

“Yes, I know; but all homes are 
not left w’ith such a blank in them as 
there will be in mine when I am gone. 
Not that there is any scarcity of far 
better and more endearing and more 
accomplished girls than I am; not that 
I am much ; but that they have made 
so much of me ! ” 

Pet’s affectionate heart was over- 
charged, and she sobbed while she pic- 
tured what would happen. 

“I know what a change papa wall 
feel at first, and I know that at first I 


I95T 

cannot be to him anything like what I 
have been these many years. And it is 
then, Mr. Clennam, then more than at 
any time, that I beg and entreat you to 
remember him, and sometimes to keep 
him company when you can spare a 
little while ; and to tell him that you 
know I was fonder of him, when I left 
him, than I ever was in all my life. For 
there is nobody — he told me so himself 
when he talked to me this very day — 
there is nobody he likes so well as you, 
or trusts so much.” 

A clew to what had passed between 
the father and daughter dropped like a 
heavy stone into the w-ell of Clennam’s 
heart, and swelled the water to his eyes. 
He said, cheerily, but not quite so 
cheerily as he tried to say, that it should 
be done, — that he gave her his faithful 
promise. 

“If I do not speak of mamma,” 
said Pet, more moved by, and more 
pretty in, her innocent grief, than Clen- 
nam could trust himself even now to 
consider, — for which reason he counted 
the trees between them and the fading 
light as they slowly diminished in num- 
ber, — “ it is because mamma will under- 
stand me better in this action, and w’ill 
feel my loss in a different way, and will 
look forward in a different manner. But 
you know' w'hat a dear, devoted mother 
she is, and you will remember her too ; 
will you not? ” 

Let Minnie trust him, Clennam said, 
let Minnie trust him to do all she 
washed. 

“And, dear Mr. Clennam,” said 
Minnie, “because papa and one whom 
I need not name do not fully appreciate 
and understand one another yet, as they 
will by and by ; and because it will be 
the duty, and the pride, and pleasure of 
my new' life, to draw them to a better 
knowledge of one another, and to be a 
happiness to one another, and to be 
proud of one another, and to love one 
another, both loving me so dearly ; O, 
as you are a kind, true man ! when I 
am first separated from home (I am 
going a long distance aw^ay), try to 
reconcile papa to him a little more, and 
use your great influence to keep him 
before papa’s mind free from prejudice 
and in his real form. Will you do 


196 


LITTLE DORRIT 


this for me, as you are a noble-hearted 
friend? ” 

Poor Pet ! Self-deceived, mistaken 
child ! When were such changes ever 
made in men’s natural relations to one 
another : when was such reconcilement 
of ingrain differences ever effected ! It 
has been tried many times by other 
daughters, Minnie ; it has never suc- 
ceeded ; nothing has ever come of it 
but failure. 

So Clennam thought. So he did not 
say ; it was too late. He bound himself 
to do all she asked, and she knew full 
well that he would do it. 

They were now at the last tree in the 
avenue. She stopped, and withdrew 
her arm. Speaking to him with her 
eyes lifted up to his, and with the hand 
that had lately rested on his sleeve 
tremblingly touching one of the roses in 
his breast as an additional appeal to 
him, she said : — 

“Dear Mr. Clennam, in my happi- 
ness — for I am happy, though you 
have seen me crying — I cannot bear to 
leave any cloud between us. If you 
have anything to forgive me (not any- 
thing that I have w'ilfully done, but any 
trouble I may have caused you without 
meaning it, or having it in my power to 
help it), forgive me to-night out of your 
noble heart ! ” 

He stooped to meet the guileless face 
that met his without shrinking. He 
kissed it, and answered, Heaven knew 
that he had nothing to forgive. As he 
stooped to meet the innocent face Once 
again, she whispered “Good by !” and 
he repeated it. i|jwas taking leave of 
all his old hopes, — all nobody’s old rest- 
less doubts. They came out of the 
avenue next moment arm in arm as 
they had entered it ; and the trees 
seemed to close up behind them in the 
darkness, like their ow'n perspective of 
the past. 

The voices of Mr. and Mrs. Meagles 
and Doyce were audible directly, 
speaking near the garden gate. Hear- 
ing Pet's name among them, Clennam 
called out, “She is here, with me.” 
There was some little wondering and 
laughing until they came up ; but as 
soon as they had all come together, it 
ceased, and Pet glided aw r ay. 


Mr. Meagles, Doyce, and Clennam, 
without speaking, walked up and down 
on the brink of the river, in the light of 
the rising moon, fora few minutes; and 
then Doyce lingered behind, and went 
into the house. Mr. Meagles and Clen- 
nam walked up and down together for a 
few minutes more without speaking, 
until at length the former broke silence. 

“Arthur,” said he, using that fa- 
miliar address for the first time in 
their communication, “ do you remem- 
ber my telling you, as we walked up 
and down one hot morning, looking 
over the harbor at Marseilles, that Pet’s 
baby sister who was dead seemed to 
mother and me to have grown as she 
had grown, and changed as she had 
changed? ” 

“ Very well.” 

“ You remember my saying that our 
thoughts had never been able to sepa- 
rate those twin sisters, and that in our 
fancy whatever Pet was, the other 
was ? ” 

“Yes, very well.” 

“Arthur,” said Mr. Meagles, much 
subdued, “ I carry that fancy further to- 
night. I feel to-night, my dear fellow, 
as if you had loved my dead child very 
tenderly, and had lost her when she 
was like what Pet is now.” 

“ Thank you,” murmured Clennam. — 
“thank you ! ” And pressed his hand. 

“ Will you come in ? ” said Mr. Mea- 
gles, presently. 

“ In a little while.” 

Mr. Meagles fell away, and he was 
left alone. When he had walked on 
the river’s brink in the peaceful moon- 
light, for some half an hour, he put his 
hand in his breast and tenderly took 
out the handful of roses. Perhaps he 
put them to his heart, perhaps he put 
them to his lips, but certainly he bent 
down on the shore, and gently launched 
them on the flowing river. Pale and 
unreal in the moonlight, the river 
floated them away. 

The lights were bright within doors 
when he entered, and the faces on which 
they shone, his own face not excepted, 
were soon quietly cheerful. They 
talked of many subjects (his partner 
never had had such a ready store to 
draw upon for the beguiling of the 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


*97 


time), and so to bed, and to sleep. 
While the flowers, pale and unreal in 
the moonlight, floated away upon the 
river ; and thus do greater things that 
once were in our breasts, and near our 
hearts, flow from us to the eternal 
seas. 


CHAPTER XXIX. 

MRS. FLINTWINCH GOES ON DREAM- 
ING. 

The house in the city preserved its 
heavy dulness through all these transac- 
tions, and the invalid within it turned 
the same unvarying round of life. 
Morning, noon, and night, morning, 
noon, and night, each recurring with 
its accompanying monotony, always the 
same reluctant return of the same se- 
quences of machinery, like a dragging 
piece of clockwork. 

The wheeled chair had its associated 
remembrances and reveries, one may 
suppose, as every place that is made the 
station of a human being has. Pictures 
of demolished streets and altered houses, 
as they formerly were when the occu- 
pant of the chair was familiar with 
them ; images of people as they too used 
to be, with little or no allowance made 
for the lapse of time since they were 
seen ; of these, there must have been 
many in the long routine of gloomy 
days. To stop the clock of busy ex- 
istence at the hour when we were per- 
sonally sequestered from it ; to suppose 
mankind stricken motionless when we 
were brought to a standstill : to be 
unable to measure the changes beyond 
our view by any larger standard than 
the shrunken one of our own uniform 
and contracted existence ; is the in- 
firmity of many invalids, and the men- 
tal unhealthiness of almost all recluses. 

What scenes and actors the stern wo- 
man most reviewed, as she sat from sea- 
son to season in her one dark room, 
none knew but herself. Mr. Flintwinch, 
with his wry presence brought to bear 
upon her daily like some eccentric me- 
chanical force, would perhaps have 
screwed it out of her, if there had 
been less resistance in her; but she 


was too strong for him. So far as 
Mistress Affery was concerned, to re- 
gard her liege lord and her disabled 
mistress with a face of blank wonder, 
to go about the house after dark with 
her apron over her head, always to lis- 
ten for the strange noises and some- 
times to hear them, and never to 
emerge from her ghostly, dreamy, 
sleep-waking state, was occupation 
enough for her. 

There was a fair stroke of business 
doing, as Mistress Affery made out, for 
her husband had abundant occupation 
in his little office, and saw more people 
than had been used to come there for 
some years. This might easily be, the 
house having been long deserted ; but 
he did receive letters, and comers, and 
keep books, and correspond. More- 
over, he went about to other counting- 
houses, and to wharves, and docks, and 
to the Custom-House, and to Garra- 
way’s Coffee-House, and the Jerusalem 
Coffee-House, and on ’Change ; so that 
he was much in and out. He began, 
too, sometimes of an evening, when 
Mrs. Clennam expressed no particular 
wish for his society, to resort to a tavern 
in the neighborhood to look at the ship- 
ping-news and closing prices in the 
evening paper, and even to exchange 
small socialities w r ith mercantile sea 
captains who frequented that establish- 
ment. At some period of every day, 
he and Mrs. Clennam held a council on 
matters of business ; and it appeared to 
Affery, who was always groping about, 
listening and watching, that the two 
clever ones were making money. 

The state of mind into which Mr. 
Flintwinch’s dazed lady had fallen had 
now begun to be so expressed in all her 
looks and actions, that she was held in 
very low account by the two clever ones, 
as a person, never of strong intellect, who 
was becoming foolish. Perhaps because 
her appearance was not of a commercial 
cast, or perhaps because it occurred 
to him that his having taken her to wife 
might expose his judgment to doubt in 
the minds of customers, Mr. Flintwinch 
laid his commands upon her that she 
should hold her peace on the subject of 
her conjugal relations, and should no 
longer call him Jeremiah out of the 


LITTLE D0RR1T. 


198 

domestic trio. Her frequent forgetful- 
ness of this admonition intensified her 
starded manner, since Mr. Flintwinch’s 
habit of avenging himself on her remiss- 
ness by making springs after her on the 
staircase, and shaking her, occasioned 
her to be always nervously uncertain 
when she might be thus waylaid next. 

Little Dorrit had finished a long 
day’s work in Mrs. Clennam’s room, 
and was neatly gathering up her shreds 
and odds and ends before going home. 
Mr. Pancks, whom AfFery had just 
shown in, was addressing an inquiry to 
Mrs. Clennam on the subject of her 
health, coupled with the remark that, 
“happening to find himself in that di- 
rection,” he had looked in to inquire, 
on behalf of his proprietor, how she 
found herself. Mrs. Clennam, with a 
deep contraction of her brow's, was 
looking at him. 

“Mr. Casby knows,” said she, “that 
I am not subject to changes. The 
change that I await here is the great 
change.” 

“ Indeed, ma’am ? ” returned Mr. 
Pancks, w’ith a wandering eye towards 
the figure of the little seamstress on her 
knee picking threads and fraying of her 
work from the carpet “You look 
nicely, ma’am.” 

“I bear what I have to bear,” she 
answered. “ Do you what you have to 
do.” 

“ Thank you, ma’am,” said Mr. 
Pancks; “such is my endeavor.” 

“ You are often in this direction, are 
you not ? ” asked Mrs. Clennam. 

“Why, yes, ma’am,” said Pancks, 
“rather so lately; I have lately been 
round this way a good deal, ow’ing to 
one thing and another.” 

“ Beg Mr. Casby and his daughter 
not to trouble themselves, by deputy, 
about me. When they wish to see me, 
they know I am here to see them. 
They have no need .to trouble them- 
selves to send. You have no need to 
trouble yourself to come.” 

“ Not the least trouble, ma’am,” said 
Mr. Pancks. “You really are looking 
uncommonly nicely, ma’am.” 

“ Thank you. Good evening.” 

The dismissal, and its accompanying 
finger pointed straight at the door, was 


so curt and direct that Mr. Pancks did 
not see his way to prolonging his visit. 
He stirred up his hair with his spright- 
liest expression, glanced at the little 
figure again, said, “ Good evening, 
ma’am ; don’t come down, Mrs. AfFery ; 
I know the road to the door,” and 
steamed out. Mrs. Clennam, her chin 
resting on her hand, followed him with 
attentive and darkly distrustful eyes ; 
and AfFery stood looking at her, as if 
she were spell-bound. 

Slowly and thoughtfully, Mrs. Clen- 
nam’s eyes turned from the door by 
which Pancks had gone out to Little 
Dorrit, rising from the carpet. With 
her chin drooping more heavily on her 
hand, and her eyes vigilant and lower- 
ing, the sick woman sat looking at her 
until she attracted her attention. Little 
Dorrit colored under such a gaze, and 
looked down. Mrs. Clennam still sat 
intent. 

“ Little Dorrit,” she said when she 
at last broke silence, “w'hat do you 
know of that man ? ” 

“ I don’t know anything of him, 
ma’am, except that I have seen him 
about, and that he has spoken to 
me.” 

“ What has he said to you ? ” 

“ I don’t understand what he has 
said, he is so strange. But nothing 
rough or disagreeable.” 

“ Why does he come here to see 
you ? ” 

“ I don’t know, ma’am,” said Little 
Dorrit, with perfect frankness. 

“ You know that he does come here 
to see you ? ” 

“ I have fancied so,” said Little 
Dorrit. “ But why he should come 
here or anywhere for that, ma’am, I 
can’t think,” 

Mrs. Clennam cast her eyes towards 
the ground, and, with her strong, set 
face as intent upon a subject in her 
mind as it had lately been upon the 
form that seemed to pass out of her 
view, sat absorbed. Some minutes 
elapsed before she came out of this 
thoughtfulness, and resumed her hard 
composure. 

Little Dorrit in the mean while had 
been waiting to go, but afraid to disturb 
her by moving. She now ventured to 


LITTLE DORR IT. 


199 


leave the spot where she had been 
standing since she had risen, and to 
pass gently round by the wheeled chair. 
She stopped at its side to say, “ Good 
night, ma’am.” 

Mrs. Clennam put out her hand, and 
laid it on her arm. Little Dorrit, con- 
fused under the touch, stood faltering. 
Perhaps some momentary recollection 
of the story of the Princess may have 
been in her mind. 

“Tell me, Little Dorrit,” said Mrs. 
Clennam. “ Have you many friends 
now ? ” 

“ Very few, ma’am. Besides you, 
only Miss Flora and — one more.” 

“ Meaning,” said Mrs. Clennam, 
with her unbent finger again pointing 
to the door, “ that man ? ” 

“ O no, ma’am ! ” 

“ Some friend of his, perhaps?” 

“No, ma’am.” Little Dorrit ear- 
nestly shook her head. “ O no ! No 
one at all like him, or belonging to 
him.” 

“ Well ! ” said Mrs. Clennam, almost 
smiling. “ It is no affair of mine. I 
ask, because I take an interest in you ; 
and because l believe I was your friend 
when you had no other who could serve 
you. Is that so?” 

“Yes, ma’am ; indeed it is. I have 
been here many a time when, but for 
you and the work you gave me, we 
should have wanted everything.” 

“ We,” repeated Mrs. Clennam, look- 
ing towards the watch, once her dead 
husband’s, which always lay upon her 
table. “Are there many of" you?” 

“ Only father and I, now. I mean, 
only father and I to keep regularly out 
of what we get.” 

“ Have you undergone many priva- 
tions? You and your father, and who 
else there may be of you ? ” asked Mrs. 
Clennam, speaking deliberately, and 
meditatively turning the watch over 
and over. 

“ Sometimes it has been rather hard 
to live,” said Little Dorrit, in her soft 
voice, and timid, uncomplaining way ; 
“but I think not harder — as to that — 
than many people find it.” 

“That ’swell said!” Mrs. Clennam 
quickly returned. “ That ’s the truth ! 
You are a good, thoughtful girl. You 


are a grateful girl too, or I much mis- 
take you.” 

“ It is only natural to be that. There 
is no merit in being that,” said Little 
Dorrit. “ I am, indeed.” 

Mrs. Clennam, with a gentleness of 
which the dreaming Affrey had never 
dreamed her to be capable, drew down 
the face of her little seamstress, and 
kissed her on the forehead. 

“ Now, go, Little Dorrit,” said she, 
“ or you will be late, poor child ! ” 

In all the dreams Mistress Affery 
had been piling up since she first 
became devoted to the pursuit, she had 
dreamed nothing more astonishing than 
this. Her head ached with the idea 
that, she would find the other clever 
one kissing Little Dorrit next, and then 
the two clever ones embracing each 
other and dissolving into tears of ten- 
derness for all mankind. The idea 
quite stunned her, as she attended 
the light footsteps down the stairs, 
that the house -door might be safely shut. 

On opening it to let Little Dorrit out, 
she found Mr. Pancks, instead of hav- 
ing gone his way, as in any less won- 
derful place and among less wonderful 
phenomena he might have been reason- 
ably expected to do, fluttering up and 
down the court outside the house. The 
moment he saw Little Dorrit, he passed 
her briskly, said with his finger to his 
nose (as Mistress Affery distinctly 
heard), “ Pancks the gypsy, fortune- 
telling,” and went away. “ Lord save 
us, here ’s a gypsy and a fortune-teller 
in it now ! ” cried Mistress Affery. 
“ What next ! ” 

She stood at the open door, stagger- 
ing herself with this enigma, on a rainy, 
thundery evening. The clouds were fly- 
ing fast, the wind was coming up in 
gusts, banging some neighboring shut- 
ters that had broken loose, twirling the 
rusty chimney-cowls and weathercocks, 
and rushing round and round a confined 
adjacent churchyard as if it had a mind 
to blow the dead citizens out of their 
graves. The low thunder, muttering in 
all quarters of the sky at once, seemed 
to threaten vengeance for this attempt- 
ed desecration, and to mutter, “ Let 
them rest ! Let them rest ! ” 

Mistress Affery, whose fear of thun- 


200 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


der and lightning was only to be 
equalled by her dread of the haunted 
house with a premature and preter- 
natural darkness in it, stood undecided 
whether to go in or not, until the ques- 
tion was settled for her by the door 
blowing upon her in a violent gust of 
wind and shutting her out. “ What ’s 
to be done now, what ’s to be done 
now !” cried Mistress Affery, wringing 
her hands in this last uneasy dream of 
all ; “ when she ’s all alone by herself 
inside, and can no more come down to 
open it than the churchyard dead them- 
selves ! ” 

In this dilemma, Mistress Affery, 
with her apron as a hood to keep the 
rain off, ran crying up and down the 
solitary paved enclosure several times. 
Why she should then stoop down and 
look in at the keyhole of the door, as 
if an eye would open it, it would be 
difficult to say : but it is none the less 
what most people would have done in 
the same situation, and k is what she 
did. 

From this posture she started up sud- 
denly, with a half-scream, feeling some- 
thing on her shoulder. It was the touch 
of a hand ; of a man’s hand. 

The man was dressed like a traveller, 
in a foraging cap with fur about it, and 
a heap of cloak. He looked like a for- 
eigner. He had a quantity of hair and 
mustache — jet black, except at the 
shaggy ends, where it had a tinge of 
red — and a high hook nose. He 
laughed at Mistress Affery’ s start and 
cry ; and, as he laughed, his mustache 
went up under his nose, and his nose 
came down over his mustache. 

“What’s the matter?” he asked in 
plain English. “ What are you fright- 
ened at? ” 

“At you,” panted Affery. 

“ Me, madam ? ” 

“ And the dismal evening, and — and 
everything,” said Affery. “And here! 
The wind has been and blown the door 
to, and I can’t get in.” 

“ Hah ! ” said the gentleman, who 
took that very coolly. “ Indeed ! Do 
you know such a name as Clennam 
about here?” 

“ Lord bless us, I should think I did, 
I should think I did!” cried Affery, 


exasperated into a new wringing of 
hands by the inquiry. 

“ Where about here?” 

“Where!” cried Affery, goaded in- 
to another inspection of the keyhole. 
“ Where but here in this house ? And 
she ’s all alone in her room, and lost 
the use of her limbs and can’t stir to 
help herself or me, and the t’ other clev- 
er one ’s out, and Lord forgive me ! ” 
cried Affery, driven into a frantic dance 
by these accumulated considerations, 
“ if I ain’t a going headlong out of my 
mind ! ” 

Taking a warmer view of the matter 
now that it concerned himself, the gen- 
tleman stepped back to glance at the 
house, and his eyes soon rested on the 
long narrow window of the little room 
near the hall door. 

“Where may the lady be who has 
lost the use of her limbs, madam ? ” he 
inquired, with that peculiar smile which 
Mistress Affery could not choose but 
keep her eyes upon. 

“Up there!” said Affery. “Them 
two windows.” 

“ Hah ! I am of a fair size, but could 
not have the honor of presenting myself 
in. that room without a ladder. Now, 
madam, frankly, — frankness is a part of 
my character, — shall I open the door 
for you ! ” 

“Yes, bless you, sir, for a dear cree- 
tur, and do it at once,” cried Affery, 
“for she may be a calling to me at this 
very present minute, or may be setting 
herself afire and burning herself to 
death, or there ’s no knowing what may 
be happening to her, and me a going 
out of my mind at thinking of it ! ” 

“Stay, my good madam!” He re- 
strained her impatience with a smooth 
white hand. “ Business hours, I ap- 
prehend, are over for the day?” 

“Yes, yes, yes,” cried Affery. “ Long 
ago.” 

“ Let me make, then, a fair proposal. 
Fairness is a part of my character. I 
am just landed from the packet-boat, as 
you may see.” He showed her that his 
cloak was very wet, and that his boots 
were saturated with water ; she had 
previously observed that he was di- 
shevelled and sallow, as if from a rough 
voyage, and so chilled that he could not 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


201 


keep his teeth from chattering. “ I am 
just landed from the packet-boat, mad- 
am, and have been delayed by the 
weather ; the infernal weather ! In con- 
sequence of this, madam, some neces- 
sary business that I should otherwise 
have transacted here within the regular 
hours (necessary business because mon- 
ey business), still remains to be done. 
Now, if vou will fetch any authorized 
neighboring somebody to do it, in re- 
turn for my opening the door, I ’ll open 
the door. If this arrangement should 
be objectionable, I ’ll — ” and with the 
same smile he made a significant feint 
of backing away. 

Mistress Affery, heartily glad to effect 
the proposed compromise, gave in her 
willing adhesion to it. The gentleman 
at once requested her to do him the 
favor of holding his cloak, took a short 
run at the narrow window, made a leap 
at the sill, clung his way up the bricks, 
and in a moment had his hand at the 
sash, raising it. His eyes looked so 
very sinister, as he put his leg into the 
room and glanced round at Mistress 
Affery, that she thought, with a sudden 
coldness, if he were to go straight up 
stairs to murder the invalid, what could 
she do to prevent him ? 

Happily he had no such purpose ; for 
he reappeared, in a moment, at the 
house door. “ Now, my dear madam,” 
he said, as he took back his cloak and 
threw it on, “ if you ’ll have the good- 
ness to — What the devil ’s that ! ” 

The strangest of sounds. Evidently 
close at hand from the peculiar shock it 
communicated to the' air, yet subdued 
as if it were far off. A tremble, a rum- 
ble, and a fall of some light dry matter. 

“ What the devil is it? ” 

“ I don’t know what it is, but I ’ve 
heard the like of it over and over 
again,” said Affery, who had caught his 
arm. 

He could hardly be a very brave man, 
even she thought in her dreamy start 
and fright, for his trembling lips had 
turned colorless. After listening a few 
moments, he made light of it. 

“ Bah ! Nothing ! Now, my dear 
madam, I think you spoke of some 
clever personage. Will you be so good 
as to confront me with that genius?” 


He held the door in his hand, as though 
he were quite ready to shut her out 
again if she failed. 

“ Don’t you say anything about the 
door and me, then,” whispered Affery. 

“ Not a word.” 

“And don’t you stir from here, or 
speak if she calls, while I run round the 
corner.” 

“ Madam, I am a statue.” 

Affery had so vivid a fear of his going 
stealthily up stairs the moment her 
back was turned, that, after hurrying 
out of sight, she returned to the gate- 
way to peep at him. Seeing him still 
on the threshold, more out of the house 
than in it, as if he had no love for dark- 
ness and no desire to probe its mys- 
teries, she flew into the next street, and 
sent a message into the tavern to Mr. 
Flintwinch who came out directly. The 
two, returning together, — the lady in 
advance, and Mr. Flintwinch coming 
up briskly behind, animated with the 
hope of shaking her before she could get 
housed, — saw the gentleman standing 
in the same place in the dark, and heard 
the strong voice of Mrs. Clennam call- 
ing from her room, “ Who is it ? What 
is it? Why does no one answer ? Who 
is that, down there ? ” 


CHAPTER XXX. 

THE WORD OF A GENTLEMAN. 

When Mr. and Mrs. Flintwinch 
panted up to the door of the old house 
in the twilight, Jeremiah within a sec- 
ond of Affery, the stranger started back. 
“ Death of my soul ! ” he exclaimed. 
“Why, how did you get here?” 

Mr. Flintwinch, to whom these words 
were spoken, repaid the stranger’s won- 
der in full. He gazed at him with blank 
astonishment ; he looked over his own 
shoulder, as expecting to see some one 
he had not been aware of standing be- 
hind him ; he gazed at the stranger 
again, speechlessly, at a loss to know 
what he meant ; he looked to his wife 
for explanation ; receiving none, he 
pounced upon her, and shook her with 
such heartiness that he shook her cap 


202 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


off her head, saying between his teeth, 
with grim raillery, as he did it, “ Affery, 
my woman, you must have a dose, my 
woman ! This is some of your tricks ! 
You have been dreaming again, mis- 
tress. What ’s it about ? Who is it ? 
What does it mean ? Speak out or be 
choked ! It ’s the only choice I ’ll give 
you.” 

Supposing Mistress Affery to have 
any power of election at the moment, 
her choice was decidedly to be choked ; 
for she answered not a syllable to this 
adjuration, but, with her bare head wag- 
ging violently backwards and forwards, 
resigned herself to her punishment. 
The stranger, however, picking up her 
cap with an air of gallantry, interposed. 

“ Permit me,” said he, laying his 
hand on the shoulder of Jeremiah, who 
stopped, and released his victim. 
“ Thank you. Excuse me. Husband 
and wife I know, from this playfulness. 
Haha ! Always agreeable to see that 
relation playfully maintained. Listen ! 
May I suggest that somebody up stairs 
in the dark is becoming energetically 
curious to know what is going on 
here ? ” 

This reference to Mrs. Clennam’s 
voice reminded Mr. Flintwinch to step 
into the hall and call up the staircase. 
“It’s all right, I am here, Affery is 
coming with your light.” Then he said 
to the latter flustered woman, who was 
putting her cap on, “ Get out with you, 
and get up stairs ! ” and then turned to 
the stranger, and said to him, “ Now, 
sir, what might you please to want ? ” 

“ I am afraid,” said the stranger, “ I 
must be so troublesome as to propose a 
candle.” 

“ True,” assented Jeremiah. “ I was 
going to do so. Please to stand where 
you are, while I get one.” 

The visitor was standing in the door- 
way, but turned a little into the gloom 
of the house as Mr. Flintwinch turned, 
and pursued him with his eyes into the 
little room, where he groped about for a 
phosphorus box. When he found it, it 
was damp, or otherwise out of order; 
and match after match that he struck 
into it lighted sufficiently to throw a 
dull glare about his groping face, and to 
sprinkle his hands with pale little spots 


of fire, but not sufficiently to light the 
candle. The stranger, taking advantage 
of this fitful illumination of his visage, 
looked intently and wonderingly at him. 
Jeremiah, when he at last lighted the 
candle, knew he had been doing this, 
by seeing the last shade of a lowering 
watchfulness clear away from his face, 
as it broke into the doubtful smile that 
was a large ingredient in its expression. 

“ Be so good,” said Jeremiah, closing 
the house door, and taking a pretty 
sharp survey of the smiling visitor in his 
turn, “ as to step into my counting- 
house. — It’s all right, I tell you!” 
petulantly breaking off to answer the 
voice up stairs, still unsatisfied, though 
Affery was there, speaking in persuasive 
tones. “ Don’t I tell you it ’s all right? 
Preserve the woman, has she no reason 
at all in her ! ” 

“Timorous,” remarked the stranger. 

“Timorous?” said Mr. Flintwinch, 
turning his head to retort, as he went 
before with the candle. “ More cour- 
ageous than ninety men in a hundred, 
sir, let me tell you.” 

“Though an invalid ? ” 

“ Many years an invalid. Mrs. Clen- 
nam. The only one of that name left 
in the House now. My partner.” 

Saying something apologetically, as he 
crossed the hall, to the effect that at 
that time of night they were not in the 
habit of receiving any one, and were 
always shut up, Mr. Flintwinch led the 
way into his own office, which presented 
a sufficiently business-like appearance. 
Here he put the light on his desk, and 
said to the stranger, with his wriest 
twist upon him, “Your commands.” 

“ My name is Blandois.” 

“ Blandois. I don’t know it,” said 
Jeremiah. 

“ I thought it possible,” resumed the 
other, “ that you might have been ad- 
vised from Paris — ” 

“ We have had no advice from Paris, 
respecting anybody of the name of 
Blandois,” said Jeremiah. 

“ No?” 

“No.” 

Jeremiah stood in his favorite atti- 
tude. The smiling Mr. Blandois, open- 
ing his cloak to get his hand to a 
breast-pocket, paused to say, with a 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


203 


laugh in his glittering eyes, which it oc- 
curred to Mr. Flintwinch were too near 
together, — 

“You are so like a friend of mine ! 
Not so identically the same as I sup- 
posed when I really did for the moment 
take you to be the same in the dusk, — 
for which I ought to apologize ; permit 
me to do so ; a readiness to confess my 
errors is, I hope, a part of the frankness 
of my character, — still, however, un- 
commonly like.” 

“ Indeed ? ” said Jeremiah, perverse- 
ly. “ But I have not received any let- 
ter of advice from anywhere, respecting 
anybody of the name of Blandois.” 

“Just so,” said the stranger. 

“ Just so,” said Jeremiah. 

Mr. Blandois, not at all put out by 
this omission on the part of the corre- 
spondents of the house of Clennam 
and Co., took his pocket-book from his 
breast-pocket, selected a letter from that 
receptacle, and handed it to Mr. Flint- 
winch. “No doubt you are w'ell ac- 
quainted with the writing. Perhaps the 
letter speaks for itself, and requires no 
advice. You are a far more competent 
judge of such affairs than I am. It is 
my misfortune to be, not so much a 
man of business, as what the world 
calls (arbitrarily) a gentleman.” 

Mr. Flintwinch took the letter, and 
read, under date of Paris, “We have to 
present to you, on behalf of a highly es- 
teemed correspondent of our Firm, M. 
Blandois, of this city,” See., &c. “ Such 
facilities as he may require, and such 
attentions as may lie in your powder,” 
&c., &c. “Also have to add that if you 
will honor M. Blandois’s drafts at sight 
to the extent of, say Fifty Pounds 
sterling (.£50),” &c., &c. 

“ Very good, sir,” said Mr. Flint- 
winch. “ Take a chair. To the ex- 
tent of anything that our House can do, 
— w'e are in a retired, old-fashioned, 
steady way of business, sir, — we shall 
be happy to render you our best assist- 
ance. I observe, from the date of this, 
that we could not yet be advised of it. 
Probably you came over wdth the de- 
layed mail that brings the advice.” 

“ That I came over with the delayed 
mail, sir,” returned Mr. Blandois, pass- 
ing his white hand down his high- 


hooked nose, “I know to the cost of my 
head and stomach ; the detestable and 
intolerable weather having racked them 
both. You see me in the plight in 
w hich I came out of the Packet within 
this half-hour. I ought to have been 
here hours ago, and then I should not 
have to apologize — permit me to apol- 
ogize — for presenting myself so unsea- 
sonably, and frightening — no, bv the 
by, you said not frightening ; permit me 
to apologize again — the esteemed lady, 
Mrs. Clennam, in her invalid chamber 
above stairs.” 

Swagger, and an air of authorized 
condescension, do so much, that Mr. 
Flintwinch had already begun to think 
this a highly gentlemanly personage. 
Not the less unyielding w’ith him on that 
account, he scraped his chin and said, 
what could he have the honor of doing 
for Mr. Blandois to-night, out of busi- 
ness hours? 

“ Faith !” returned that gentleman, 
shrugging his cloaked shoulders. “ I 
must change, and eat and drink, and be 
lodged somewhere. Have the kindness 
to advise me, a total stranger, where, 
and money is a matter of perfect indif- 
ference, until to-morrow. The nearer 
the place, the better. Next door, if 
that’s all.” 

Mr. Flintw'inch was slowly beginning, 
“ For a gentleman of your habits, there 
is not in this immediate neighborhood 
any hotel — ” when Mr. Blandois took 
him up. 

“ So much for my habits ! my dear 
sir,” snapping his fingers. “A citizen 
of the w'orld has no habits. That I am, 
in my poor way, a gentleman, by Heav- 
en ! I will not deny, but I have no un- 
accommodating prejudiced habits. A 
clean room, a hot dish for dinner, and a 
bottle of not absolutely poisonous w'ine, 
are all I want to-night. But I want that 
much, without the trouble of going one 
unnecessary inch to get it.” 

“There is,”- said Mr. Flintwinch, 
with more than his usual deliberation, 
as he met, for a moment, Mr. Blandois’s 
shining eyes, which w'ere restless, — 
“there is a coffee-house and tavern 
close here, which, so far, I can recom- 
mend : but there ’s no style about it.” 

“ I dispense with style ! ” said Mr. 


204 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


Blandois, waving his hand. “ Do me 
the honor to show me the house, and 
introduce me there (if I am not too 
troublesome), and I shall be infinitely 
obliged.” 

Mr. Flintwinch, upon this, looked 
up his hat, and lighted Mr. Blandois 
across the hall again. As he put the 
candle on a bracket, where the dark old 
panelling almost served as an extin- 
guisher for it, he bethought himself of 
going up to tell the invalid that he 
would not be absent five minutes. 

“Oblige me,” said the visitor, on his 
saying so, “ by presenting my card of 
visit. Do me the favor to add, that I 
shall be happy to wait on Mrs. Clen- 
nam, to offer my personal compliments, 
and to apologize for having occasioned 
any agitation in this tranquil corner, if 
it should suit her convenience to endure 
the presence of a stranger for a few min- 
utes, after he shall have changed his 
wet clothes and fortified himself with 
something to eat and drink.” 

Jeremiah made all despatch, and said, 
on his return, “ She ’ll be glad to see 
you, sir; but, being conscious that her 
sick-room has no' attractions, wishes 
me to say that she won’t hold you to 
your offer, in case you should think 
better of it.” 

“ To think better of it,” returned the 
gallant Blandois, “ would be to slight a 
lady ; to slight a lady would be to be 
deficient in chivalry tow-ards the sex ; 
and chivalry towards the sex is a part 
of my character ! ” Thus expressing 
himself, he threw the draggled skirt of 
his cloak over his shoulder, and accom- 
panied Mr. Flintwinch to the tavern ; 
taking up on the road a porter, wdio w'as 
•waiting with his portmanteau on the 
outer side of the gateway. 

The house w'as kept in a homely 
manner, and the condescension of Mr. 
Blandois was infinite. It seemed to 
fill to inconvenience the little bar in 
which the widow landlady and her two 
daughters received him ; it was much 
too big for the narrow wainscoted room 
with a bagatelle-board in it, that w'as 
first proposed for his reception ; it per- 
fectly swamped the little private holi- 
day sitting-room of the family, which 
w'as finally given up to him. Here, in 


dry clothes and scented linen, w'ith 
sleeked hair, a great ring on each fore- 
finger, and a massive show of w'atch- 
chain, Mr. Blandois, w aiting for his din- 
ner, lolling on a window-seat with his 
knees drawn up, looked (for all the 
difference in the setting of the jewel) 
fearfully and wonderfully like a certain 
Monsieur Rigaud who had once so 
waited for his breakfast, lying on the 
stone ledge of the iron grating of a cell 
in a villanous dungeon at Marseilles. 

His greed at dinner, too, w'as closely 
in keeping with the greed of Monsieur 
Rigaud at breakfast. His avaricious 
manner of collecting all the eatables 
about him, and devouring some with 
his eyes, v'hile devouring others with 
his jaws, was the same manner. His 
utter disregard of other people, as 
shown in his w'ay of tossing the little 
womanly toys of furniture about, fling- 
ing favorite cushions under his boots 
for a softer rest, and crushing delicate 
coverings with his big body and his 
great black head, had the same brute 
selfishness at the bottom of it. The 
softly moving hands that w ere so busy 
among the dishes had the old w'icked fa- 
cility of the hands that had clung to the 
bars. And when he could eat no more, 
and sat sucking his delicate fingers one 
by one and wiping them on a cloth, 
there wanted nothing but the substitu- 
tion of vine-leaves to finish the picture. 

On this man, with his mustache going 
up and his nose coining down in that 
most evil of smiles, and w'ith his sur- 
face eyes looking as if they belonged to 
his dyed hair, and had had their nat- 
ural power of reflecting light stopped 
by some similar process, Nature, always 
true, and never working in vain, had set 
the mark, Beware ! It was not her 
fault, if the warning were fruitless. 
She is never to blame in any such in- 
stance. 

Mr. Blandois, having finished his 
repast and cleaned his fingers, took a 
cigar from his pocket, and, lying on the 
window-seat, again, smoked it out at 
his leisure, occasionally apostrophizing 
the smoke as it parted from his thin 
lips in a thin stream : — 

“ Blandois, you shall turn the tables 
on society, my little child. Haha ! 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


205 


Holy blue, you have begun well, Blan- 
dois ! At a pinch, an excellent master 
in English or French : a man for the 
bosom of families ! You have a quick 
perception, you have humor, you have 
ease, you have insinuating manners, 
you have a good appearance ; in effect, 
you are a gentleman ! A gentleman 
you shall live, my small boy, and a gen- 
tleman you shall die. You shall win, 
however the game goes. They shall 
all confess your merit, Blandois. You 
shall subdue the society which has 
grievously wronged you, to your own 
high spirit. Death of my soul. You 
are high-spirited by right, and by na- 
ture, my Blandois ! ” 

To such soothing murmurs did this 
gentleman smoke out his cigar and 
drink out his bottle of wine. Both 
being finished, he shook himself into a 
sitting attitude ; and with the conclud- 
ing serious apostrophe, “ Hold, then ! 
Blandois, you ingenious one, have all 
your wits about you ! ” arose and went 
back to the house of Clennam and Co. 

He was received at the door by Mis- 
tress Affery, who, under instructions 
from her lord, had lighted up two can- 
dles in the hall and a third on the stair- 
case, and who conducted him to Mrs. 
Clennam’s room. Tea was prepared 
there, and such little company arrange- 
ments had been made as usually attend- 
ed the reception of expected visitors. 
They were slight on the greatest occa- 
sion, never extending beyond the pro- 
duction of the China tea-service, and 
the covering of the bed with a sober 
and sad drapery. For the rest, there 
was the bier-like sofa with the block 
upon it, and the figure in the widow’s 
dress, as if attired for execution ; the 
fire topped by the mound of damped 
ashes ; the grate with its second little 
mound of ashes ; the kettle, and the 
smell of black dye : all as they had been 
for fifteen years. 

Mr. Flintwinch presented the gentle- 
man commended to the consideration 
of Clennam and Co. Mrs. Clennam, 
who had the letter lying before her, 
bent her head and requested him to 
sit. They looked very closely at one 
another. That was but natural curios- 
ity. 


“I thank you, sir, for thinking of a 
disabled woman like me. Few who 
come here on business have any remem- 
brance to bestow on one so removed 
from observation. It would be idle to 
expect that they should have. Out of 
sight, out of mind. When I am grate- 
ful for the exception, I don’t complain 
of the rule.” 

Mr. Blandois, in his most gentlemanly 
manner, was afraid he had disturbed 
her by unhappily presenting himself at 
such an unconscionable time. For 
which he had already offered his best 

apologies to Mr. he begged pardon 

— but by name had not the distin- 
guished honor — 

“ Mr. Flintwinch has been connected 
with the House many years.” 

Mr. Blandois was Mr. Flintwinch’s 
most obedient humble servant. He 
entreated Mr. Flintwinch to receive the 
assurance of his profoundest considera- 
tion. 

“ My husband being dead,” said Mrs. 
Clennam, “ and my son preferring an- 
other pursuit, our old House has no 
other representative in these days than 
Mr. Flintwinch.” 

“ What do you call yourself? ” was 
the surly demand of that gentleman. 
“ You have the head of two men.” 

“ My sex disqualifies me,” she pro- 
ceeded with merely a slight turn of her 
eyes in Jeremiah’s direction, ‘from 
taking a responsible part in the busi- 
ness, even if I had the ability r* and 
therefore Mr. Flintwinch combines my 
interests with his own, and conducts it. 
It is not what it used to be ; but some 
of our old friends (principally the writers 
of this letter) have the kindness not to 
forget us, and we retain the power of 
doing what they intrust to us as effi- 
ciently as we ever did. This, however, 
is not interesting to you. You are Eng- 
lish, sir?” 

“Faith, madam, no; I am neither 
born nor bred in England. In effect, 
I am of no country,” said Mr. Blandois, 
stretching out his leg and smiting it : 
“ I descend from half a dozen coun-r 
tries.” 

“ You have been much about the 
world?” 

“ It is true. By Heaven, madam, I 


2o6 


LITTLE DORR IT. 


have been here and there and every- 
where ! ” 

“You have no ties, probably. Are 
not married ?” 

“Madam,” said Mr. Blandois, with 
an ugly fall of his eyebrows, “ 1 adore 
your sex, but I am not married, — never 
was.” ' 

Mistress Affery, who stood at the 
table near him, pouring out the tea, 
happened in her dreamy state to look 
at him as he said these words, and to 
fancy that she caught an expression in 
his eyes which attracted her own eyes 
so that she could not get them away. 
The effect of this fancy was, to keep 
her staring at him with the teapot in 
her hand, not only to her own great 
uneasiness, but manifestly to his, too ; 
and, through them both, to Mrs. Clen- 
nam’s and Mr. Flintwinch’s. Thus a 
few ghostly moments supervened, when 
they were all confusedly staring, with- 
out knowing why. 

“Affery,” her mistress was the first 
to say, “ what is the matter with you ? ” 

“ I don’t know,” said Mistress Affery, 
with her disengaged left-hand extended 
towards the visitor. “It ain’t me. It’s 
him ! ” 

“ What does this good woman mean?” 
cried Mr. Blandois, turning white, hot, 
and slowly rising with a look of such 
deadly wrath that it contrasted surpris- 
ingly with the slight force of his words. 
“ How is it possible to understand this 
good creature ! ” 

“ It’s not possible,” said Mr. Flint- 
winch, screwing himself rapidly in that 
direction. “ She don’t know what she 
means. She ’s an idiot, a wanderer in 
her mind. She shall have a dose, she 
shall have such a dose ! Get along 
with you, my woman,” he added in her 
ear, “ get along with you, while you 
know you ’re Affery, and before you ’re 
shaken to yeast.” 

Mistress Affery, sensible of the dan- 
ger in which her identity stood, relin- 
quished the teapot as her husband 
seized it, put her apron over her head, 
and in a twinkling vanished. The vis- 
itor gradually broke into a smile, and 
sat down again. 

“You’ll excuse her, Mr. Blandois,” 
said Jeremiah, pouring out the tea 


himself ; she ’s failing and breaking up ; 
that ’s what she ’s about. Do you take 
sugar, sir ? ” 

“ Thank you ; no tea for me. — Par- 
don my observing it, but that ’s a very 
remarkable watch ! ” 

The tea-table was drawn up near the 
sofa, with a small interval between it 
and Mrs. Clennam’s own particular ta- 
ble. Mr. Blandois in his gallantry had 
risen to hand that lady her tea (her 
dish of toast was already there), and it 
was. in placing the cup conveniently 
within her reach that the w r atch, lying 
before her as it always did, attracted his 
attention. Mrs. Clennam looked sud- 
denly up at him. 

“May I be permitted? Thank you. 
A fine old-fashioned watch,” he said, 
taking it in his hand. “ Heavy for use, 
but massive and genuine. I have a 
partiality for everything genuine. Such 
as I am, I am genuine myself. Hah ! 
A gentleman’s watch with two cases in 
the old fashion. May I remove it from 
the outer case ? Thank you. Ay ? 
An old silk watch-lining, worked with 
beads ! I have often seen these among 
old Dutch people and Belgians. Quaint 
things ! ” 

“They are old-fashioned too,” said 
Mrs. Clennam. 

“ Very. But this is not as old as the 
watch, I think ? ” 

“ I think not.” 

“ Extraordinary how they used to 
complicate these ciphers ! ” remarked 
Mr. Blandois, glancing up with his own 
smile again. “ Now, is this D. N. F. ? 
It might be almost anything.” 

“ Those are the letters.” 

Mr. Flintwinch, who had been ob- 
servantly pausing all this time with a 
cup of tea in his hand, and his mouth 
open ready to swallow the contents, be- 
gan to do so ; always entirely filling his 
mouth before he emptied it at a gulp ; 
and always deliberating again before he 
refilled it. 

“ D. N. F. was some tender, lovely, 
fascinating, fair creature, I make no 
doubt,” observed Mr. Blandois, as he 
snapped on the case again. “ I adore 
her memory on the assumption. Un- 
fortunately for my peace of mind, I 
adore but too readily. It may be a 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


207 


vice, it may be a virtue, but adoration 
of female beauty and merit constitutes 
three parts of my character, madam.” 

Mr. Flintwinch had by this time 
poured himself out another cup of tea, 
which he was swallowing in gulps as 
before, with his eyes directed to the in- 
valid. 

“You may be heart-free here, sir,” 
she returned to Mr. Blandois. “ Those 
letters are not intended, I believe, for 
the initials of any name.” 

“ Of a motto perhaps,” said Mr. 
Blandois, casually. 

“ Of a sentence. They have always 
stood, I believe, for Do Not Forget ! ” 

“ And naturally,” said Mr. Blandois, 
replacing the watch, and stepping back- 
ward to his former chair, “ you do not 
forget.” 

Mr. Flintwinch, finishing his tea, not 
only took a longer gulp than he had 
taken yet, but made his succeeding 
pause under new circumstances : that 
is to say, with his head thrown back 
and his cup still held at his lips, while 
his eyes were still directed at the in- 
valid. She had that force of face, and 
that concentrated air of collecting her 
firmness or obstinacy, which represented 
in her case what would have been ges- 
ture and action in another, as she re- 
plied with her deliberate strength of 
speech : — 

“ No, sir, I do not forget. To lead a 
life as monotonous as mine has been 
during many years, is not the way to 
forget. To lead a life of self-correction 
is not the way to forget. To be sensi- 
ble of having (as we all have, every one 
of us, all the children of Adam !) of- 
fences to expiate and peace to make, 
does not justify the desire to forget. 
Therefore I have long dismissed it, and 
I neither forget nor wish to forget.” 

Mr. Flintwinch, who had latterly been 
shaking the sediment at the bottom 
of his teacup round and round, here 
gulped it down, and, putting the cup in 
the tea-tray, as done with, turned his 
eyes upon Mr. Blandois, as if to ask 
him what he thought of that ? 

“ All expressed, madam,” said Mr. 
Blandois, with his smoothest bow and 
his white hand on his breast, “ by the 
word ‘ naturally,’ which I am proud to 


have had sufficient apprehension and 
appreciation (but without appreciation I 
could not be Blandois) to employ.” 

“ Pardon me, sir,” she returned, “ if 
I doubt the likelihood of a gentleman 
of pleasure and change and politeness, 
accustomed to court and to be court- 
ed — ” 

“ O madam ! By Heaven ! ” 

“ — If I doubt the likelihood of such 
a character quite comprehending what 
belongs to mine in my circumstances. 
Not to obtrude doctrine upon you,” 
she looked at the rigid pile of hard, pale 
books before her, “ (for you go your own 
way, and the consequences are on your 
own head,) I will say this much ; that I 
shape my course by pilots, strictly by 
proved and tried pilots, under whom I 
cannot be shipwrecked, — cannot be, — 
and that if I were unmindful of the ad- 
monition conveyed in those three let- 
ters, I should not be half as chastened 
as I am.” 

It was curious how she seized the oc- 
casion to argue with some invisible op- 
ponent. Perhaps with her own better 
sense, always turning upon herself and 
her own deception. 

“ If I forgot my ignorances in my life 
of health and freedom, I might complain 
of the life to which I am now condemned. 
I never do ; I never have done. If I 
forgot that this scene, the Earth, is ex- 
pressly meant to be a scene of gloom and 
hardship and dark trial for the creatures 
who are made out of its dust, I might 
have some tenderness for its vanities. 
But I have no such tenderness. If I did 
not know that we are, every one, the 
subject (most justly the subject) of a 
wrath that must be satisfied, and 
against which mere actions are nothing, 
I might repine at the difference between 
me, imprisoned here, and the people 
who pass that gateway yonder. But I 
take it as a grace and favor to be elected 
to make the satisfaction I am making 
here, to know what I know for certain 
here, and to work out what I have 
worked out here. My affliction might 
otherwise have had no meaning to me. 
Hence I would forget, and I do forget, 
nothing. Hence I am contented, and 
say it is better with me than with mil- 
lions.” 


208 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


As she spoke these words, she put 
her hand upon the watch, and restored 
it to the precise spot on her little table 
which it always occupied. With her 
touch lingering upon it, she sat for some 
moments afterwards, looking at it stead- 
ily and half defiantly. 

Mr. Blandois, during this exposition, 
had been strictly attentive, keeping his 
eyes fastened on the lady, and thought- 
fully stroking his mustache with his 
two hands. Mr. Flintwinch had been 
a little fidgety, and now struck in. 

“ There, there, there ! ” said he. 
“ That is quite understood, Mrs. Clen- 
nam, and you have spoken piously and 
well. Mr. Blandois, I suspect, is not 
of a pious cast.” 

“ On the contrary, sir ! ” that gentle- 
man protested, snapping his fingers. 
“Your pardon! It ’s a part of my char- 
acter. I am sensitive, ardent, conscien- 
tious, and imaginative. A sensitive, 
ardent, conscientious, and imaginative 
man, Mr. Flintwinch, must be that, or 
nothing ! ” 

There was an inkling of suspicion in 
Mr. Flintwinch’s face that he might be 
nothing, as he swaggered out of his 
chair (it was characteristic of this man, 
as it is of all men similarly marked, 
that whatever he did, he overdid, though 
it were sometimes by only a hair’s- 
breadth), and approached to take his 
leave of Mrs. Clennam. 

“ With what will appear to you the 
egotism of a sick old woman, sir,” she 
then said, “ though really through your 
accidental allusion, I have been led 
away into the subject of myself and my 
infirmities. Being so considerate as to 
visit me, I hope you will be likewise so 
considerate as to overlook that. Don’t 
compliment me, if you please.” For he 
was evidently going to do it. “ Mr. 
Flintwinch will be happy to render you 
any service, and I hope your stay in 
this city may prove agreeable.” 

Mr. Blandois thanked her, and kissed 
his hand several times. “This. is an 
old room,” he remarked, with a sudden 
sprightliness of manner, looking round 
when he got near the door. “ I have 
been so interested that I have not ob- 
served it. But it ’s a genuine old 
room.” 


“ It is a genuine old house,” said 
Mrs. Clennam, with her frozen smile. 
“A place of no pretensions, but a piece 
of antiquity.” 

“ Faith ! ” cried the visitor. “If Mr. 
Flintwinch would do me the favor to 
take me through the rooms on my way 
out, he could hardly oblige me more. 
An old house is a weakness with me. I 
have many weaknesses, but none great- 
er. I love and study the picturesque 
in all its varieties. I have been called 
picturesque myself. It is no merit to 
be picturesque, — I have greater merits, 
perhaps, — but I may be, by an acci- 
dent. Sympathy, sympathy ! ” 

“ I tell you beforehand, Mr. Blandois, 
that you ’ll find it very dingy, and very 
bare,” said Jeremiah, taking up the 
candle. “It’s not worth your looking 
at.” But Mr. Blandois, smiting him 
in a friendly manner on the back, 
only laughed ; so the said Blandois 
kissed his hand again to M>s. Clen- 
nam, and they went out of the room to- 
gether. 

“You don’t care to go up stairs?” 
said Jeremiah, on the landing. 

“ On the contrary, Mr. Flintwinch ; 
if not tiresome to you, I shall be rav- 
ished ! ” 

Mr. Flintwinch, therefore, wormed 
himself up the staircase, and Mr. Blan- 
dois followed close. They ascended to 
the great garret bedroom which Arthur 
had occupied on*the night of his return. 
“ There, Mr. Blandois ! ” said Jere- 
miah, showing it, “ I hope you may 
think that worth coming so high to see. 

I confess I don’t.” 

Mr. Blandois being enraptured, they 
walked through other garrets and pas- 
sages, and came down the staircase 
again. By this time, Mr. Flintwinch 
had remarked that he never found the 
visitor looking at any room, after throw- 
ing one quick glance around, but al- 
ways found the visitor looking at him, 
Mr. Flintwinch. With this discovery 
in his thoughts, he turned about on the 
staircase for another experiment. He 
met his eyes directly ; and on the in- 
stant of their fixing one another, the 
visitor, with that ugly play of nose and 
mustache, laughed (as he had done at 
every similar moment since they left 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


209 


Mrs. Clennam’s chamber) a diabolical- 
ly silent laugh. 

As a much shorter man than the vis- 
itor, Mr. Flintwinch was at the physical 
disadvantage of being thus disagreeably 
leered at from a height ; and as he went 
first down the staircase, and was usually 
a step or two lower than the other, this 
disadvantage was at the time increased. 
He postponed looking at Mr. Blandois 
again until this accidental inequality 
was removed by their having entered 
the late Mr. Clennam’s room. But 
then, twisting himself suddenly round 
upon him, he found his look un- 
changed. 

“ A most admirable old house,” 
smiled Mr. Blandois. “ So mysterious. 
Do you never hearjany haunted noises 
here ? ” 

“ Noises,” returned Mr. Flintwinch. 
“No.” 

“ Nor see any devils?” 

“ Not,” said Mr. Flintwinch, grimly 
screwing himself at his questioner, — 
“ not any that introduce themselves un- 
der that name and in that capacity.” 

“ Haha ! A portrait here, I see.” 

(Still looking at Mr. Flintwinch, as if 
he were the portrait.) 

“ It ’s a portrait, sir, as you observe.” 

“ May I ask the subject, Mr. Flint- 
winch ? ” 

“ Mr. Clennam, deceased. Her hus- 
band.” 

“ Former owner of the remarkable 
watch, perhaps? ” said the visitor. 

Mr. Flintwinch, who had cast his 
eyes towards the portrait, twisted him- 
self about again, and again found him- 
self the subject of the same look and 
smile. “Yes, Mr. Blandois,” he re- 
plied tartly. “ It was his, and his 
uncle’s before him, and Lord knows 
who before him ; and that’s all I can 
tell you of its pedigree.” 

“ That ’s a strongly marked character, 
Mr. Flintwinch, our friend upstairs.” 

“Yes, sir,” said Jeremiah, twisting 
himself at the visitor again, as he did 
during the whole of this dialogue, like 
some screw-machine that fell short of 
its grip ; for the other never changed, 
and he always felt obliged to retreat a 
little. “ She is a remarkable woman. 
Great fortitude, great strength of mind.” 

14 


“ They must have been very happy,” 
said Blandois. 

“ Who? ” demanded Mr. Flintwinch, 
with another screw at. him. 

Mr. Blandois shook his right forefin- 
ger towards the sick-room, and his left 
forefinger towards the portrait, and then 
putting his arms akimbo, and striding 
his legs wide apart, stood smiling down 
at Mr. Flintwinch with the advancing 
nose and the retreating mustache. 

“As happy as most other married 
people, I suppose,” returned Mr. Flint- 
winch. “ I can’t say. I don’t know. 
There are secrets in all families.” 

“ Secrets ! ” cried Mr. Blandois, 
quickly. “Say it again, my son.” 

“ I say,” replied Mr. Flintwinch, up- 
on whom he had swelled himself so sud- 
denly that Mr. Flintwinch found his face 
almost brushed by the dilated chest, — 
“ I say there are secrets in all families.” 

“ So there are,” cried the other, clap- 
ping him on both shoulders, and rolling 
him backwards and forwards. “Haha! 
you are right. So there are ! Secrets ? 
Holy Blue ! There are the devil’s own 
secrets in some families, Mr. Flint- 
winch ! ” With that, after clapping 
Mr. Flintwinch on both shoulders sev- 
eral times, as if, in a friendly and humor- 
ous way, he were rallying him on a joke 
he had made, he threw up his arms, 
threw back his head, hooked his hands 
together behind it, and burst into a 
roar of laughter. It was in vain for Mr. 
Flintwinch to try another screw at him. 
He had his laugh out. 

“But favor me with the candle a 
moment,” he said, when he had done. 
“ Let us have a look at the husband of 
the remarkable lady. Hah ! ” holding 
up the light at arm’s length. “A de- 
cided expression of face here too, though 
not of the same character. Looks as if 
he were saying — what is it — Do Not 
Forget — does he not, Mr. Flintwinch? 
By Heaven, sir, he does ! ” 

As he returned him the candle, he 
looked at him once more ; and then, 
leisurely strolling out with him into the 
hall, declared it to be a charming old 
house indeed, and one which had so 
greatly pleased him, that he would not 
have missed inspecting it for a hundred 
pounds. 


210 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


Throughout these singular freedoms 
on the part of Mr. Blandois, which in- 
volved a general alteration in his de- 
meanor, making it much coarser and 
rougher, much more violent and auda- 
cious, than before, Mr. Flintwinch, 
whose leathern face w'as not liable to 
many changes, preserved its immobility 
intact. Beyond now appearing, per- 
haps, to have been left hanging a trifle 
too long before that friendly operation 
of cutting down, he outwardly main- 
tained an equable composure. They 
had brought their survey to a close in 
the little room at the side of the hall, 
and he stood there eying Mr. Blandois. 

“ I am glad you are so well satisfied, 
sir,” was his calm remark. “I didn’t 
expect it. You seem to be quite in good 
spirits.” 

“In admirable spirits,” returned 
Blandois. “Word of honor! never 
more refreshed in spirits. Do you ever 
have presentiments, Mr. Flintwinch?” 

“ I am not sure that I know what you 
mean by the term, sir,” replied that gen- 
tleman. 

“ Say in this case, Mr. Flintwinch, 
undefined anticipations of pleasure to 
come.” 

“ I can’t say I am sensible of such a 
sensation at present,” returned Mr. 
Flintwinch, with the utmost gravity. 
“If I should find it coming on, I ’ll 
mention it.” 

“Now I,” said Blandois, — “I, my 
son, have a presentiment to-night that 
we shall be well acquainted. Do you 
find it coming on?” 

“N — no,” returned Mr. Flintwinch, 
deliberately inquiring of himself. “I 
can’t say I do.” 

“ I have a strong presentiment that 
we shall become intimately acquainted. 
— You have no feeling of that sort 
yet?” ' 

•“ Not yet,” said Mr. Flintwinch. 

Mr. Blandois, taking him by both 
shoulders again, rolled him about a lit- 
tle in his former merry w'ay, then drew 
his arm through his own, and invited 
him to come off and drink a bottle of 
wine like a dear deep old dog as he 
was. 

Without a moment’s indecision, Mr. 
Flintwinch accepted the invitation, and 


they went out to the quarters where the 
traveller was lodged, through a heavy 
rain which had rattled on the windows, 
roofs, and pavements, ever since night- 
fall. The thunder and lightning had 
long ago passed over, but the rain was 
furious. On their arrival in Mr. Blan- 
dois’s room, a bottle of port wine was 
ordered by that gallant gentleman ; 
who (crushing every pretty thing he 
could collect, in the soft disposition of 
his dainty figure) coiled himself upon 
the window-seat, while Mr. Flintwinch 
took a chair opposite to him, with the 
table between them. Mr. Blandois 
proposed having the largest glasses in 
the house, to which Mr. Flintwinch as- 
sented. The bumpers filled, Mr. Blan- 
dois, with a roistering gayety, clinked 
the top of his glass against the bottom 
of Mr. Flintwinch’s, and the bottom of 
his glass against the top of Mr. Flint- 
winch’s, and drank tp the intimate ac- 
quaintance he foresaw. Mr. Flintwinch 
gravely pledged him, and drank all the 
wine he could get, and. said nothing. 
As often as Mr. Blandois clinked glass- 
es (which was at every replenishment), 
Mr. Flintwinch stolidly did his part of 
the clinking, and would have stolidly 
done his companion’s part of the wine 
as well as his own, — being, except in 
the article of palate, a mere cask. 

In short, Mr. Blandois found that to 
pour port wine into the reticent Flint- 
winch was, not to open him, but to shut 
him up. Moreover, he had the appear- 
ance of a perfect ability to go on all 
night ; or, if occasion were, all next day, 
and all next night ; whereas Mr. Blan- 
dois soon grew indistinctly conscious of 
swaggering too fiercely and boastfully. 
He therefore terminated the entertain- 
ment at the end of the third bottle. 

“You will draw upon us to-morrow, 
sir,” said Mr. Flintwinch, with a busi- 
ness-like face at parting. 

“My Cabbage,” returned the other, 
taking him by the collar with both 
hands. “ I ’ll draw upon you ; have no 
fear. Adieu, my Flintwinch. Receive 
at parting ” — here he gave him a South- 
ern embrace, and kissed him sounding- 
ly on both cheeks — “the word of a 
gentleman ! By a thousand Thunders, 
you shall see me again ! ” 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


21 1 


He did not present himself next day, 
though the letter of advice came duly to 
hand. Inquiring after him at night, 
Mr. Flintwinch found, with surprise, 
that he had paid his bill and gone^ back 
to the Continent by way of Calais. 
Nevertheless, Jeremiah scraped out of 
his cogitating face a lively conviction 
that Mr. Blandois would keep his word 
on this occasion, and would be seen 
again. 


CHAPTER XXXI. 

SPIRIT. 

Anybody may pass, any day, in the 
thronged thoroughfares of the metropo- 
lis, some meagre, wrinkled, yellow old 
man (who might be supposed to have 
dropped from the stars, if there were 
any star in the heavens dull enough to 
be suspected of casting off so feeble a 
spark), creeping along with a scared air, 
as though bewildered and a little fright- 
ened by the noise and bustle. This old 
man is always a little old man. If he 
were ever a big old man, he has shrunk 
into a little old man ; if he were always 
a little old man, he has dwindled into a 
less old man. His coat is of a color 
and cut that never was the mode any- 
where, at any period. Clearly, it was 
not made for him, or for any individual 
mortal. Some wholesale contractor 
measured Fate for five thousand coats 
of such quality, and Fate has lent this 
old coat to this old man, as one of a 
long unfinished line of many old men. 
It has always large dull metal buttons, 
similar to no other buttons. This old 
man wears a hat, a thumbed and nap- 
less and yet an obdurate hat, which has 
never adapted itself to the shape of his 
poor head. His coarse shirt and his 
coarse neckcloth have no more individ- 
uality than his coat and hat ; they have 
the same character of not being his, — 
of not being anybody’s. Yet this old 
man wears these clothes with a certain 
unaccustomed air of being dressed and 
elaborated for the public ways ; as 
though he passed the greater part of his 
time in a nightcap and gown. And so, 
like the country mouse in the second 


year of a famine, come to see the town- 
mouse, and timidly threading his way 
to the town-mouse’s lodging through a 
city of cats, this old man passes in the 
streets. 

Sometimes, on holidays towards 
evening, he will be seen to walk with a 
slightly increased infirmity, and his old 
^eyes will glimmer with a moist and 
marshy light. Then the little old man 
is drunk. A very small measure will 
- overset him ; he may be bowled off his 
unsteady legs with a half-pint pot. 
Some pitying acquaintance — chance 
acquaintance very often has warmed 
up his weakness with a treat of beer, 
and the consequence will be the lapse 
of a longer time than usual before he 
shall pass again. For the little old 
man is going home .to the Workhouse ; 
aud on his good behavior they do not 
let him out often (though methinks they 
might, considering the few years he has 
before him to go out in, under the 
sun) ; and on his bad behavior they 
shut him up closer than ever, in a grove 
of two score and nineteen more old 
men, every one of whom smells of all 
the others. 

Mrs. Plornish’s father — a poor little 
reedy piping old gentleman, like a worn- 
out bird ; who had been in what he 
called the music-binding business, and 
met with great misfortunes, and who 
had seldom been able to make his way, 
or to see it, or to pay it, or to do anything 
at all with it but find it no thoroughfare 
— had retired of his own accord to the 
Workhouse which was appointed by 
law to be the Good Samaritan of his 
district (without the two-pence, which 
was bad political economy), on the set- 
tlement of that execution which had 
carried Mr. Plornish to the Marshalsea 
College. Previous to his son-in-law’s 
difficulties coming to that head. Old 
Nandy (he was always so called in his 
legal Retreat, but he was Old Mr. Nan- 
dy among the Bleeding Hearts) had 
sat in a corner of the Plornish firesides, 
and taken his bite and sup out of the 
Plornish cupboard. He still hoped to 
resume that domestic position, when 
Fortune should smile upon his son-in- 
law ; in the mean time, while she pre- 
served an immovable countenance, he 


212 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


was, and resolved to remain, one of 
these little old men in a grove of lit- 
tle old men with a community of fla- 
vor. 

But no poverty in him, and no coat 
on him that never was the mode, and 
no Old Men’s Ward for his dwelling- 
place, could quench his daughter’s ad- 
miration. Mrs. Plomish was as proud 
of her father’s talents as she could pos- 
sibly have been if they had made him 
Lord Chancellor. She had as firm a 
belief in the sweetness and propriety 
of his manners as she could possibly 
have had if he had been Lord Cham- 
berlain. The poor little old man knew 
some pale and vapid little songs, long 
out of date, about Chloe, and Phyllis, 
and Strephon being wounded by the 
son of Venus ; and for Mrs. Plomish 
there was no such music at the Opera 
as the small internal flutterings and 
chirpings wherein he would discharge 
himself of these ditties, like a weak, 
little, broken barrel-organ, ground by a 
baby. On his “days out,” those flecks 
of light, in his flat vista of pollard old 
men, it was at once Mrs. Plornish’s 
delight and sorrow, when he was strong 
with meat, and had taken his full half- 
penny worth of porter, to say, “ Sing us 
a song, father.” Then would he give 
them Chloe, and, if he were in pretty 
good spirits, Phyllis also, — Strephon he 
had hardly been up to, since he went 
into retirement, — and then would Mrs. 
Plomish declare she did believe there 
never was such a singer as father, and 
wipe her eyes. 

If he had come from Court on these 
occasions, nay, if he had been the noble 
Refrigerator, come home triumphantly 
from a foreign court to be presented and 
promoted on his last tremendous fail- 
ure, Mrs. Plornish could not have hand- 
ed him with greater elevation about 
Bleeding Heart Yard. “ Here ’s fa- 
ther,” she would say, presenting him 
to a neighbor. “ Father will soon be 
home with us for good, now. Ain’t 
father looking well? Father ’s a sweet- 
er singer than ever ; you ’d never have 
forgotten it, if you ’d aheard him just 
now.” As to Mr. Plornish, he had 
married these articles of belief in mar- 
rying Mr. Nandy’s daughter, and only 


wondered how it was that so gifted an 
old gentleman had not made a fortune. 
This he attributed, after much reflec- 
tion, to his musical genius not hav- 
ing been scientifically developed in 
his youth. “For why,” argued Mr. 
Plornish, — “ why go a binding music 
when you ’ve got it in yourself? That ’s 
where it is, I consider.” 

Old Nandy had a patron, — one pa- 
tron. He had a patron who in a certain 
sumptuous way — an apologetic way, 
as if he constantly took an admiring 
audience to witness that he really could 
not help being more free with this old 
fellow than they might have expected, 
on account of his simplicity and poverty 
— was mightily good to him. Old 
Nandy had been several times to the 
Marshalsea College, communicating 
with his son-in-law during his short 
durance there ; and had happily ac- 
quired to himself, and had by degrees 
and in course of time much improved 
the patronage of the Father of that na- 
tional institution. 

Mr. Dorrit was in the habit of receiv- 
ing this old man, as if the old man held 
of him in vassalage under some feudal 
tenure. He made little treats and teas 
for him, as if he came in with his hom- 
age from some outlying district where 
the tenantry were in a primitive state. 
It seemed as if there were moments 
when he could by no means have sworn 
but that the old man was an ancient 
retainer of his, who had been meritori- 
ously faithful. When he mentioned 
him, he spoke of him casually as his 
old pensioner. He had a wonderful 
satisfaction in seeing him, and in com- 
menting on his decayed condition after 
he was gone. It appeared to him amaz- 
ing that he could hold up his head at 
all, poor creature. “ In the Workhouse, 
sir, the Union ; no privacy, no visitors, 
no station, no respect, no specialty. 
Most deplorable!” 

It was old Nandy’s birthday, and they 
let him out. He said nothing about its 
being his birthday, or they might have 
kept him in ; for such old men should 
not be born. He passed along the 
streets as usual to Bleeding Heart 
Yard, and had his dinner with his 
daughter and son-in-law, and gave 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


213 


them Phyllis. He had hardly conclud- 
ed, when Little Dorrit looked in to 
see how they all were. 

“ Miss Dorrit,” said Mrs. Plornish. 
“ Here ’s father ! Ain’t he looking 
nice? And such voice he’s in ! ” 

Little Dorrit gave him her hand, and 
smilingly said she had not seen him this 
long time. 

“ No, they’re rather hard on poor 
father,” said Mrs. Plornish, with a 
lengthening face, “and don’t let him 
have half as much change and fresh 
air as would benefit him. But he ’ll 
soon be home for good, now. Won’t 
you, father?” 

“Yes, my dear, I hope so. In good 
time, please God.” 

Here Mr. Plornish delivered himself 
of an oration which he invariably made, 
word for word the same, on all such op-, 
portunities. It was couched in the fol- 
lowing terms : — 

“ John Edward Nandy. Sir. While 
there ’s a ounce of wittles or drink of any 
sort in this present roof, you’re fully 
welcome to your share on it. While 
there ’s a handful of fire or a mouthful 
of bed in this present roof, you ’re fully 
welcome to your share on it. If so be 
as there should be nothing in this pres- 
ent roof, you should be as welcome to 
your share on it as if it was something 
much or little. And this is what I mean 
and so I don’t deceive you, and conse- 
quently which is to stand out is to en- 
treat of you, and therefore why not do 
it?” 

To this lucid address, which Mr. 
Plornish always delivered as if he had 
composed it (as no doubt he had) with 
enormous labor, Mrs. Plornish’s father 
pipingly replied : — 

“ I thank you kindly, Thomas, and I 
know your intentions well, which is the 
same I thank you kindly for. But no, 
Thomas. Until such times as it ’s not 
to take it out of your children’s mouths, 
which take it is, and call it by what 
name you will it do remain and equally 
deprive though may they come and 
too soon they can not come, no Thomas, 
no ! ” 

Mrs. Plornish, who had been turning 
her face a little away with a corner of 
her apron in her hand, brought herself 


back to the conversation again by tell- 
ing Miss Dorrit that father was going 
over the water to pay his respects, un- 
less she knew of any reason why it 
might not be agreeable. 

Her answer was: “ I am going straight 
home, and if he will come with me I 
shall be so glad to take care of him, — 
so glad,” said Little Dorrit, always 
thoughtful of the feelings of the weak, 
“ of his company.” 

“ There, father ! ” cried Mrs. Plor- 
nish. “ Ain’t you a gay young man to be 
going for a walk along with Miss Dor- 
rit ! Let me tie your neck-handkerchief 
into a regular good bow', for you ’re a 
regular beau yourself, father, if ever 
there w'as one.” 

With this filial joke his daughter 
smartened him up, and gave him a 
loving hug, and stood at the door with 
her weak child in her arms and her 
strong child tumbling dowm the steps, 
looking after her little old father as he 
toddled away with his arm under Lit- 
tle Dorrit’s. 

They walked at a slow pace, and Little 
Dorrit took him by the Iron Bridge and 
sat him down there for a rest, and they 
looked over at the water and talked about 
the shipping, and the old man mentioned 
what he would do if he had a ship full 
of gold coming home to him (his plan 
was to take a noble lodging for the 
Plornishes and himself at a Tea Gar- 
dens, and live there all the rest of 
their lives, attended on by the w'aiter), 
and it w r as a special birthday for the 
old man. They were within five min- 
utes of their destination, when, at the 
corner of her own street, they came 
upon Fanny in her new bonnet bound 
for the same port. 

“Why, good gracious me, Amy!” 
cried that young lady starting. “You 
never mean it ! ” 

“ Mean what, Fanny dear? ” 

“ Well ! I could have believed a great 
deal of you,” returned the young lady, 
with burning indignation, “ but I don’t 
think even I could have believed this 
of even you ! ” 

“ Fanny ! ” cried Little Dorrit, wound- 
ed and astonished. 

“Oh! Don’t Fanny me, you mean 
little thing, don’t ! The idea of coming 


214 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


along the open streets, in the broad 
light of day, with a Pauper ! ” (firing 
off the last word as if it were a ball from 
an air-gun.) 

“ O Fanny ! ” 

“ I tell you not to Fanny me, for I ’ll 
not submit to it ! I never knew such a 
thing. The way in which you are re- 
solved and determined to disgrace us, 
on all occasions, is really infamous. 
You bad little thing ! ” 

“ Does it disgrace anybody,” said 
Little Dorrit, very gently, “to take care 
of this poor old man ? ” 

“Yes, miss,” returned her sister, 
“ and you ought to know it does. And 
you do know it does. And you do it 
because you know it does. The princi- 
pal pleasure of your life is to remind 
your family of their misfortunes. And 
the next great pleasure -of your ex- 
istence is to keep low company. But, 
however, if you have no sense of de- 
cency, I have. You ’ll please to allow 
me to go on the other side of the way 
unmolested.” 

With this, she bounced across to the 
opposite pavement. The old disgrace, 
who had been deferentially bowing a 
ace or two off (for Little Dorrit had let 
is arm go in her wonder, when Fanny 
began), and who had been hustled and 
cursed by impatient passengers for stop- 
ping the way, rejoined his companion, 
rather giddy, and said, “ I hope noth- 
ing ’s wrong with your honored father, 
miss? I hope there’s nothing the 
matter in the honored family?” 

“ No, no,” returned Little Dorrit. 
“ No, thank you. Give me your arm 
again, Mr. Nandy. We shall soon be 
there now.” 

So she talked to him as she had 
talked before, and they came to the 
lodge and found Mr. Chivery on the 
lock, and went in. Now, it happened 
that the Father of the Marshaisea was 
sauntering towards the lodge at the 
moment when they were coming out of 
it, entering the prison arm in arm. As 
the spectacle of their approach met his 
view, he displayed the utmost agitation 
and despondency of mind; and — alto- 
gether regardless of old Nandy, who, 
making his reverence, stood with his 
hat in his hand, as he always did in that 


gracious presence — turned about, and 
hurried in at his own doorway and up 
the staircase. 

Leaving the old unfortunate, whom 
in an evil hour she had taken under her 
protection, with a hurried promise to 
return to him directly, Little Dorrit 
hastened after her father, and, on the 
staircase, found Fanny following her, 
and flouncing up with offended dignity. 
The three came into the room almost 
together ; and the Father sat down in 
his chair, buried his face in his hands, 
and uttered a groan. 

“ Of course,” said Fanny. “ Very 
proper. Poor, afflicted pa ! Now, I 
hope you believe me, miss ! ” 

“What is it, father?” cried Little 
Dorrit, bending over him. “ Have I 
made you unhappy, father? Not I, I 
hope ! ” 

“You hope, indeed! I dare say! 
O, you” — Fanny paused for a suffi- 
ciently strong expression — “ you Com- 
mon-minded little Amy ! You complete 
prison-child ! ” 

He stopped these angry reproaches 
with a wave of his hand, and sobbed out, 
raising his face, and shaking his melan- 
choly head at his younger daughter, 
“ Amy, I know that you are innocent in 
intention. But you have cut me to the 
soul.” 

“ Innocent in intention ! ” the impla- 
cable Fanny struck in. “Stuff in in- 
tention ! Low in intention ! Lowering 
of the family in intention ! ” 

“Father!” cried Little Dorrit, pale 
and trembling, “ I am very sorry. Pray 
forgive me. Tell me how it is, that I 
may not do it again ! ” 

“ How it is, you prevaricating little 
piece of goods ! ” cried Fanny. “ You 
know how it is. I have told j'cu already, 
so don’t fly in the face of Providence by 
attempting to deny it ! ” 

“ Hush ! Amy,” said the father, 
passing his pocket-handkerchief several 
times across his face, and then grasping 
it convulsively in the hand that dropped 
across his knee. “ I have done what I 
could to keep you select here ; I have 
done what I could to retain you a posi- 
tion here. I may have succeeded ; I 
may not. You may know it ; you may 
not. I give no opinion. I have en- 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


215 


dured everything here but humiliation. 
That I have happily been spared — until 
this day.” 

Here his convulsive grasp unclosed 
itself, and he put his pocket-handker- 
chief to his eyes again. Little Dorrit, 
on the ground beside him, with her im- 
loring hand upon his arm, watched 
im remorsefully. Coming out of his 
fit of grief, he clenched his pocket-hand- 
kerchief once more. 

“ Humiliation I have happily been 
spared until this day. Through all my 
troubles there has been that — Spirit in 
myself, and that — that submission to 
it, if I may use the term, in those about 
me, which has spared me — ha — humil- 
iation. But this day, this minute, I 
have keenly felt it.” 

“ Of course ! How could it be other- 
wise ! ” exclaimed the irrepressible Fan- 
ny. “ Careering and prancing about 
with a Pauper ! ” (air-gun again.) 

“ But, dear father,” cried Little Dor- 
rit, “ I don’t justify myself for having 
wounded your dear heart — no ! Heaven 
knows I don’t ! ” She clasped her 
hands in quite an agony of distress. “ I 
do nothing but beg and pray you to be 
comforted and overlook it. But if I had 
not known that you were kind to the 
old man yourself, and took much notice 
of him, and were always glad to see 
him, I would not have come here with 
him, father, I would not indeed. What 
I have been so unhappy as to do, I have 
done in mistake. I would not wilfully 
bring a tear to your eyes, dear love ! ” 
said Little Dorrit, her heart wellnigh 
broken, “ for anything the world could 
give me-, or anything it could take 
away.” 

Fanny, with a partly angry and partly 
repentant sob, began to cry herself, and 
to say, — as this young lady always said 
when she was half in a passion and half 
out of it, half spiteful with herself and 
half spiteful with everybody else, — that 
she wished she was dead. 

The Father of the Marshalsea in the 
mean time took his younger daughter to 
his breast, and patted her head. 

“There, there ! Say no more, Amy, 
say no more, my child. I will forget it 
as soon as I can. I,” with hysterical 
cheerfulness, “ I — shall soon be able 


to dismiss it. It is perfectly true, my 
dear, that I am always glad to see my 
old pensioner — as such, as such — and 
that I do — ha — extend as much pro- 
tection and kindness to the — hum — the 
bruised reed — I trust I may so call him 
without impropriety — as in my circum- 
stances I can. It is quite true that this 
is the case, my dear child. At the same 
time, I preserve in doing this, if I may 
— ha — if I may use the expression — 
Spirit. Becoming Spirit. And there 
are some things which are,” he stopped 
to sob, “ irreconcilable with that, and 
wound that — wound it deeply. It is 
not that I have seen my good Amy at- 
tentive, and — ha — .condescending to 
my old pensioner — it is not that that 
hurts me. It is, if I am to close the 
painful subject by being explicit, that 
I have seen my child, my own child, 
my own daughter, coming into this Col- 
lege out of the public streets — smiling ! 
smiling ! — arm in arm with — O my 
God, a livery ! ” 

This reference to the coat of no cut 
and no time, the unfortunate gentleman 
gasped forth in a scarcely audible voice, 
and with his clenched pocket-handker- 
chief raised in the air. His excited feel- 
ings might have found some further pain- 
ful utterance, but for a knock at the door, 
which had been already twice repeated, 
and to which Fanny (still wishing her- 
self dead, and indeed now going so 
far as to add, buried) cried, “ Come 
in ! ” 

“ Ah, Young John ! ” said the Fa- 
ther, in an altered and calmed voice. 
“ What is it, Young John ? ” 

“ A letter for you, sir, being left in 
the lodge just this minute, and a 
message with it, I thought, happening 
to be there myself, sir, I would bring it 
to your room.” The speaker’s atten- 
tion was much distracted by the pite- 
ous spectacle of Little Dorrit at her 
father’s feet, with her head turned 
away. 

“ Indeed, John ? Thank you.” 

“The letter is from Mr. Clennam, 
sir, — it ’s the answer, — and the message 
was, sir, that Mr. Clennam also sent his 
compliments, and word that he would 
do himself the pleasure of calling this 
afternoon, hoping to see you, and like- 


2l6 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


wise,” attention more distracted than 
before, “ Miss Amy.” 

“ Oh ! ” As the Father glanced into 
the letter (there was a bank-note in it), 
he reddened a little, and patted Amy on 
the head afresh. “ Thank you, Young 
John. Quite right. Much obliged to 
you for your attention. No one wait- 
ing ? ” 

“ No, sir, no one waiting.” 

“ Thank you, John. How is your 
mother, Young John?” 

“ Thank you, sir, she ’s not quite as 
w'ell as we could wish, — in fact, we none 
of us are, except father, — but she ’s 
pretty well, sir.” 

“ Say we sent our remembrances, 
will you ? Say, kind remembrances, if 
you please, Young John.” 

“ Thank you, sir, I will.” And Mr. 
Chivery, Junior, went his way, having 
spontaneously composed on the spot an 
entirely new epitaph for himself, to the 
effect that Here lay the body of John 
Chivery, Who Having at such a date, 
Beheld the idol of his life, In grief and 
tears, And feeling unable to bear the 
harrowing spectacle, Immediately re- 
paired to the abode of his inconsolable 
parents, And terminated his existence, 
By his own rash act. 

“ There, there, Amy ! ” said the 
Father, when Young John had closed 
the door, “ let us say no more about it.” 
The last few minutes had improved his 
spirits remarkably, and he was quite 
lightsome. “ Where is my old pen- 
sioner all this while? We must not 
leave him by himself any longer, or he 
will begin to suppose he is not wel- 
come, and that would pain me. Will 
you fetch him, my child, or shall I ?” 

“ If you would n’t mind, father,” said 
Little Dorrit, trying to bring her sob- 
bing to a close. 

“ Certainly I will go, my dear. I 
forgot ; your eyes are rather, — There ! 
Cheer up, Amy. Don’t be uneasy 
about me. I am quite myself, again, 
my love, — quite myself. Go to your 
room, Amy, and make your face look 
comfortable and pleasant to receive 
Mr. Clennam.” 

“ I would rather stay in my own room, 
father,” returned Little Dorrit, finding 
it more difficult than before to regain 


her composure. “ I would far rather 
not see Mr. Clennam.” 

“ O, fie, fie, my dear, that ’s folly. 
Mr. Clennam is a very gentlemanly 
man, — very gentlemanly. A little re- 
served at times ; but I will say extreme- 
ly gentlemanly. I could n’t think of 
your not being here to receive Mr. 
Clennam, my dear, especially this af- 
ternoon. So go and freshen yourself 
up, Amy ; go and freshen yourself up, 
like a good girl.” 

Thus directed, Little Dorrit dutifully 
rose and obeyed ; only pausing for a 
moment, as she went out of the room, to 
give her sister a kiss of reconciliation. 
Upon which that young lady, feeling 
much harassed in her mind, and hav- 
ing for the time worn out the wish w'ith 
which she generally relieved it, con- 
ceived and executed the brilliant idea 
of wishing old Nandy dead, rather than 
that he should come bothering there 
like a disgusting, tiresome, w’icked 
wretch, and making mischief between 
two sisters. 

The Father of the Marshalsea, even 
humming a tune, and wearing his black 
velvet cap a little on one side, so much 
improved were his spirits, w ent down in- 
to the yard, and found his old pensioner 
standing hat in hand just within the 
gate, as he had stood all this time. 
“Come, Nandy!” said he, with great 
suavity. “Come up stairs, Nandy; 
you know the way ; why don’t you 
come up stairs?” He went the length, 
on this occasion, of giving him his hand, 
and saying, “How are you, Nandy? 
Are you pretty well ? ” To which that 
vocalist returned, “ I thank you, hon- 
ored sir, I am all the better for seeing 
your honor.” As they went along the 
yard, the Father of the Marshalsea 
presented him to a collegian of recent 
date. “An old acquaintance of mine, 
sir, an old pensioner.” and then said, 
“ Be covered, my good Nandy ; put 
your hat on,” wuth great consideration. 

His patronage did not stop here ; for 
he charged Maggy to get the tea ready, 
and instructed her to buy certain tea- 
cakes, fresh butter, eggs, cold ham, and 
shrimps : to purchase which collation, 
he gave her a bank-note for ten pounds, 
laying strict injunctions on her to be 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


217 


careful of the change. These prepara- 
tions were in an advanced stage of pro- 
gress, and his daughter Amy had come 
back with her work, when Clennam 
presented himself. Whom he most 
graciously received, and besought to 
join their meal. 

“ Amy, my love, you know Mr. Clen- 
nam even better than I have the happi- 
ness of doing. Fanny, my dear, you 
are acquainted with Mr. Clennam.” 
Fanny acknowledged him haughtily ; the 
position she tacitly took up in all such 
cases being that there was a vast con- 
spiracy to insult the family by not un- 
derstanding it, or sufficiently deferring 
to it, and here was one of the conspira- 
tors. ‘‘This, Mr. Clennam, you must 
know, is an old pensioner of mine, old 
Nandy, a very faithful old man.” (He 
always spoke of him as an object 
of great antiquity, but he was two or 
three years younger than himself.) “ Let 
me see. You know Plornish, I think? 
1 think my daughter Amy has men- 
tioned to me that you know poor Plor- 
nish ? ” 

“ O yes ! ” said Arthur Clennam. 

“Well, sir, this is Mrs. Plornish’s 
father.” 

“Indeed? I am glad to see him.” 

“ You would be more glad if you 
knew his many good qualities, Mr. 
Clennam.” 

“ I hope I shall come to know them, 
through knowing him,” said Arthur, 
secretly pitying the bowed and submis- 
sive figure. 

“ It is a holiday with him, and he 
comes to see his old friends who are 
always glad to see him,” observed the 
Father of the Marshalsea. Then he 
added, behind his hand, “ Union, poor 
old fellow. Out for the day.” 

By thistime Maggy, quietly assisted by 
her little mother, had spread the board, 
and the repast was ready. It being hot 
weather and the prison very close, the 
window was as wide open as it could be 
pushed. “If Maggy will spread that 
newspaper on the window-sill, my 
dear,” remarked the Father, compla- 
cently and in a half-whisper to Little 
Dorrit, “ my old pensioner can have 
his tea there, while we are having 
ours.” 


So, with a gulf between him and the 
good company of about a foot in width, 
standard measure, Mrs. Plornish’s 
father was handsomely regaled. Clen- 
nam had never seen anything like his 
magnanimous protection by that other 
Father, he of the Marshalsea ; and was 
lost in the contemplation of its many 
wonders. 

The most striking of these was per- 
haps the relishing manner in which he 
remarked on the pensioner’s infirmities 
and failings. As if he were a gracious 
Keeper, making a running commentary 
on the decline of the harmless animal 
he exhibited. 

“ Not ready for more ham yet, 
Nandy? Why, how slow you are! 
(His last teeth,” he explained to the 
company, “are going, poor old boy.”) 

At another time, he said, “No 
shrimps, Nandy?” and on his not 
instantly replying, observed, ( “ His 
hearing is becoming very defective. 
He’ll be deaf directly.”) 

At another time, he asked him, “ Do 
you walk much, Nandy, about the 
yard within the walls of that place of 
yours? ” 

“ No, sir ; no. I have n’t any great 
liking for that.” 

“No, to be sure,” he assented. 
“ Very natural.” Then he privately 
informed the circle, (“Legs going.”) 

Once he asked the pensioner, in that 
general clemency which asked him- 
anything to keep him afloat, how old 
his younger grandchild was ? 

“ John Edward,” said the pensioner, 
slowly laying down his knife and fork 
to consider. “ How old, sir? Let me 
think now.” 

The Father of the Marshalsea tapped 
his forehead. ( “ Memory weak.”) 

“John Edward, sir? Well, I really 
forget. I could n’t say, at this minute, 
sir, whether it ’s two and two months, 
or whether it ’s two and five months. 
It’s one or the other.” 

“ Don’t distress yourself by worrying 
your mind about it,” he returned, with 
infinite forbearance. (“Faculties evi- 
dently decaying, — old man rusts in the 
life he leads ! ”) 

The more of these discoveries that 
he persuaded himself he made in the 


2l8 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


pensioner, the better he appeared to 
like him ; and when he got out of his 
chair after tea to bid the pensioner 
good by, on his intimating that he 
feared, honored sir, his time was run* 
ning out, he made himself look as erect 
and strong as possible. 

“ We don’t call this a shilling, Nan- 
dy, you know,” he said, putting one in 
his hand. “ We call it tobacco.” 

“ Honored sir, I thank you. It shall 
buy tobacco. My thanks and duty to 
Miss Amy and Miss Fanny. I wish 
you good night, Mr. Clennam.” 

“ And mind you don’t forget us, you 
know, Nandy,” said the Father. “ You 
must come again, mind, whenever you 
have an afternoon. You must not come 
out without seeing us, or we shall be 
jealous. Good night, Nandy. Be very 
careful how you descend the stairs, 
Nandy ; they are rather uneven and 
worn.” With that he stood on the 
landing, watching the old man down ; 
and when he came into the room again, 
said, with a solemn satisfaction on him, 
“A melancholy sight, that, Mr. Clen- 
nam, though one has the consolation 
of knowing that he does n’t feel it 
himself. The poor old fellow is a dis- 
mal wreck. Spirit broken and gone — 
pulverized — crushed out of him, sir, 
completely ! ” 

As Clennam had a purpose in remain- 
ing, he said what he could responsive 
to these sentiments, and stood at the 
window with their enunciator, while 
Maggy and her little mother washed 
the tea-service and cleared it away. 
He noticed that his companion stood 
at the window with the air of an affable 
and accessible Sovereign, and that, 
when any of his people in the yard 
below looked up, his recognition of 
their salutes just stopped short of a 
blessing. 

When Little Dorrit had her work 
on the table, and Maggy hers on the 
bedstead, Fanny fell to tying her bon- 
net as a preliminary to her departure. 
Arthur, still having his purpose, still 
remained. At this time the door 
opened, without any notice, and Mr. 
Tip came in. He kissed Amy as she 
started up to meet him, nodded to 
Fanny, nodded to his father, gloomed 


on the visitor without further recogni- 
tion, and sat down. 

“ Tip, dear,” said Little Dorrit mild- 
ly, shocked by this, “ don’t you see — ” 

“Yes, I see, Amy. If you refer to 
the presence of any visitor you have 
here, — I say, if you refer to that,” an- 
swered Tip, jerking his head with 
emphasis towards his shoulder nearest 
Clennam, “ I see ! ” 

“ Is that all you say? ” 

“ That ’s all I say. And I suppose,” 
added the lofty young man, after a mo- 
ment’s pause, “ the visitor will under- 
stand me, when I say that ’s all I say. 
In short, I suppose the visitor will un- 
derstand, that he hasn’t used me like a 
gentleman.” 

“ I do not understand that,” observed 
the obnoxious personage referred to, 
with tranquillity. 

“No? Why, then, to make it clear- 
er to you, sir, I beg to let you know, 
that when I address what I call a prop- 
erly-worded appeal, and an urgent ap- 
peal, and a delicate appeal, to an indi- 
vidual, for a small temporary accommo- 
dation, easily within his power, — easi- 
ly within his power, mind ! — and when 
that individual writes back word to me 
that he begs to be excused, I consider 
that he does n’t treat me like a gentle- 
man.” 

The Father of the Marshalsea, who 
had surveyed his son in silence, no 
sooner heard this sentiment than he 
began, in an angry voice, — 

“ How dare you — ” But his son 
stopped him. 

“ Now, don’t ask me how I dare, 
father, because that ’s bosh. As to the 
fact of the line of conduct I choose to 
adopt towards the individual present, 
you ought to be proud of my showing a 
proper spirit.” 

“ I should think so ! ” cried Fanny. 

“ A proper spirit? ” said the Father. 
“ Yes, a proper spirit ; a becoming 
spirit. Is it come to this that my son 
teaches me — me — spirit ! ” 

“ Now, don’t let us bother about it, 
father, or have any row on the subject. 

I have fully made up my mind that the 
individual present has not treated me 
like a gentleman. And there ’s an end 
of it.” 


LITTLE DOER IT. 


219 


“But there is not an end of it, sir,” 
returned the Father. “ But there shall 
not be an end of it. You have made up 
your mind? You have made up your 
mind ? ” 

“Yes, /have. What’s the good of 
keeping on like that?” 

“ Because,” returned the Father, in 
a great heat, “ you had no right to 
make up your mind to what is mon- 
strous, to what is — ha — immoral, to 
what is — hum — parricidal. No, Mr. 
Clennam, I beg, sir. Don’t ask me to 
desist ; there is a — hum — a general 
principle involved here, which rises 
even above considerations of — ha — 
hospitality. I object to the assertion 
made by my son. “I — ha — I person- 
ally repel it.” 

“ Why, what is it to you, father ? ” 
returned the son, over his shoulder. 

“ What is it to me, sir ? I have a — 
hum — a spirit, sir, that will not endure 
it. I,” — he took out his pocket-hand- 
kerchief again and dabbed his face, — 
“ I am outraged and insulted by it. Let 
me suppose the case that I myself may 
at a certain time — ha — or times, have 
made a — hum — an appeal, and a 
properly-worded appeal, and a delicate 
appeal, and an urgent appeal, to some 
individual for a small temporary accom- 
modation. Let me suppose that that 
accommodation could have been easily 
extended, and was not extended, and 
that that individual informed me that 
he begged to be excused. Am I to be 
told by my own son, that I therefore re- 
ceived treatment not due to a gentle- 
man, and that I — ha — I submitted to 
it?” 

His daughter Amy gently tried to 
calm him, but he would not on any ac- 
count be calmed. He said his spirit 
was up, and wouldn’t endure this. 

Was he to be told that, he wished to 
know again, by his own son, on his own 
hearth, to his own face? Was that 
humiliation to be put upon him by his 
own blood ? 

“ You are putting it on yourself, fa- 
ther, and getting into all this injury of 
your own accord,” said the young gen- 
tleman, morosely. “ What I have made 
up my mind about, has nothing to do 
with you. What I said, had nothing to 


do with you. Why need you go trying 
on other people’s hats? ” 

“ I reply it has everything to do with 
me,” returned the Father. “ 1 point 
out to you, sir, with indignation, that — 
hum — the — ha — delicacy and peculi- 
arity of your father’s position should 
strike you dumb, sir, if nothing else 
should, in laying down such — ha — 
such unnatural principles. Besides ; if 
you are not filial, sir, if you discard that 
duty, are you at least — hum — not a 
Christian ? Are you — ha — an Atheist ? 
And is it Christian, let me ask you, to 
stigmatize and denounce an individual 
for begging to be excused this time, 
when the same individual may — ha — 
respond with the required accommoda- 
tion next time ? Is it the part of a Chris- 
tian not to — hum — not to try him 
again ? ” He had worked himself into 
quite a religious glow and fervor. 

“ I see precious well,” said Mr. Tip, 
rising, “ that I shall get no sensible or 
fair argument here to-night, and so the 
best thing I can do is to cut. Good 
night, Amy. Don’t be vexed. I am 
very sorry it happens here, and you 
here, upon my soul 1 am ; but I can’t 
altogether part with my spirit, even for 
your sake, old girl.” 

With those words he put on his hat 
and went out, accompanied by Miss 
Fanny ; who did not consider it spirited 
on her part to take leave of Clennam 
with any less opposing demonstration 
than a stare, importing that she had 
always known him for one of the large 
body of conspirators. 

When they were gone, the Father of 
the Marshalsea was at first inclined to 
sink into despondency again, and would 
have done so, but that a gentleman 
opportunely came up within a minute 
or two to attend him to the Snuggery. 
It was the gentleman Clennam had seen 
on the night of his own accidental de- 
tention there, who had that impalpable 
grievance about the misappropriated 
Fund on which the Marshal was sup- 
posed to batten. He presented himself 
as a deputation to escort the Father to 
the Chair ; it being an occasion on 
which he had promised to preside over 
the assembled collegians in the enjoy- 
ment of a little harmony. 


220 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


“ Such, you see, Mr. Clennam,” said 
the Father, “ are the incongruities of 
my position here. But a public duty ! 
No man, I am sure, would more readily 
recognize a public duty than yourself.” 

Clennam besought him not to delay 
a moment. 

“ Amy, my dear, if you can persuade 
Mr. Clennam to stay longer, I can leave 
the honors of our poor apology for an 
establishment* with confidence in your 
hands, and perhaps you may do some- 
thing towards erasing from Mr. Clen- 
nam’s mind the — ha — untoward and 
unpleasant circumstance which has oc- 
curred since teatime.” 

Clennam assured him that it had 
made no impression on his mind, and 
therefore required no erasure. 

“ My dear sir,” said the Father, with 
a removal of his black cap and a grasp 
of Clennam’s hand, combining to ex- 
press the safe receipt of his note and 
enclosure that afternoon, “ Heaven ever 
bless you ! ” 

So, at last, Clennam’s purpose in 
remaining was attained, and he could 
speak to Little Dorrit with nobody by. 
Maggy counted as nobody, and she was 
by. 


CHAPTER XXXII. 

MORE FORTUNE- TELLING. 

Maggy sat at her work in her great 
white cap, with its quantity of opaque 
frilling hiding what profile she had (she 
had npne to spare), and her serviceable 
eye brought to bear upon her occupa- 
tion, on the window side of the room. 
What with her flapping cap, and what 
with her unserviceable eye, she was quite 
partitioned off from her little mother, 
whose seat was opposite the window. 
The tread and shuffle of feet on the 
pavement of the yard had much dimin- 
ished since the taking of the Chair ; the 
tide of collegians having set strongly in 
the direction of harmony. Some few 
who had no music in their souls, or no 
money in their pockets, dawdled about ; 
and the old spectacle of the visitor-wife 
and the depressed unseasoned prisoner 
still lingered in corners, as broken cob- 


webs and such unsightly discomforts 
draggle in corners of other places. It 
was the quietest time the college knew, 
saving the night-hours when the col- 
legians took the benefit of the act of 
sleep. The occasional rattle of ap- 
plause upon the tables of the Snuggery 
denoted the successful termination of a 
morsel of harmony ; or the responsive 
acceptance, by the united children, of 
some toast or sentiment offered to them 
by their Father. Occasionally, a vocal 
strain more sonorous than the generality 
informed the listener that some boast- 
ful bass was in blue water, or in the 
hunting-field, or with the rein-deer, or 
on the mountain, or among the heather; 
but the Marshal of the Marshalsea 
knew better, and had got him hard and 
fast. 

As Arthur Clennam moved to sit 
down by the side of Little Dorrit, she 
trembled so that she had much ado to 
hold her needle. Clennam gently put 
his hand upon her work, and said, 
“ Dear Little Dorrit, let me lay it 
down.” 

She yielded it to him, and he put it 
aside. Her hands were tlien nervously 
clasping together, but he took one of 
them. 

“ How seldom I have seen you lately, 
Little Dorrit ! ” 

“ I have been busy, sir.” 

“ But I heard only to-day,” said 
Clennam, “by mere accident, of your 
having been with those good people 
close by me. Why not come to me, 
then ? ” 

“I — I don’t know. Or, rather, I 
thought you might be busy too. You 
generally are now, are you not?” 

He saw her trembling little form and 
her downcast face, and« the eyes that 
drooped the moment they were raised 
to his, — he saw them almost with as 
much concern as tenderness. 

“My child, your manner is so 
changed ! ” 

The trembling w r as now quite beyond 
her control. Softly withdrawing her 
hand, and laying it in her other hand, 
she sat before him with her head bent 
and her whole form trembling. 

“My own Little Dorrit,” said Clen- 
nam, compassionately. 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


221 


She burst into tears. Maggy looked 
round of a sudden, and stared for at 
least a minute ; but did not interpose. 
Clennam waited some little while before 
he spoke again. 

“ I cannot bear,” he said then, “ to 
see you weep ; but I hope this is a 
relief to an overcharged heart.” 

“ Yes, it is, sir. Nothing but that.” 

“Well, well! I feared you would 
think too much of what passed here 
just now. It is of no moment ; not the 
least. I am only unfortunate to have 
come in the way. Let it go by with 
these tears. It is not worth one of 
them. One of them ? Such an idle 
thing should be repeated, with my glad 
consent, fifty times a day, to save you a 
moment’s heart-ache, Little Dorrit.” 

She had taken courage now, and 
answered, far more in her usual manner, 
“ You are so good ! But even if there 
was nothing else in it to be sorry for 
and ashamed of, it is such a bad return 
to you — ” 

“ Hush ! ” said Clennam, smiling and 
touching her lips with his hand. “For- 
getfulness in you, who remember so 
many and so much, would be new in- 
deed. Shall I remind you that I am 
not, and that I never was, anything but 
the friend whom you agreed to trust ? 
No. You remember it, don’t you?” 

“I try to do so, or I should have bro- 
ken the promise just now, when my 
mistaken brother was here. You will 
consider his bringing-up in this place, 
and will not judge him hardly, poor 
fellow, I know ! ” In raising her eyes 
with these words, she observed his face 
more nearly than she had done yet, and 
said, with a quick change of tone, “You 
have not been ill, Mr. Clennam ? ” 

“ No.” 

“Nor tried? Nor hurt?” she asked 
him anxiously. 

It fell to Clennam, now, to be not 
guite certain how to answer. He said 
in reply, — 

“To speak the truth, I have been a 
little troubled, but it is over. Do I 
show it so plainly ? I ought to have 
more fortitude and self-command than 
that. I thought I had. I must learn 
them of you. Who could teach me 
better 1 ” 


He never thought that she saw in 
him what no one else could see. He 
never thought that in the whole world 
there were no other eyes that looked 
upon him with the same light and 
strength as hers. 

“ But it brings me to something that 
I wish to say,” he continued, “and 
therefore I will not quarrel even with 
my own face for telling tales and being 
unfaithful to me. Besides, it is a priv? 
ilege and pleasure to confide in my 
Little Dorrit. Let me confess then,, 
that, forgetting how grave I was, and 
how old I was, and how the time for 
such things had gone by me with the 
many years of sameness and little hap- 
piness that made up my long life far 
away, without marking it, — that, forget- 
ting all this, I fancied I loved some 
one.” 

“ Do I know her, sir ? ” asked Little 
Dorrit. 

“ No, my child.” 

“ Not the lady who has been kind to 
me for your sake ? ” 

“Flora. No, no. Did you think — ” 

“ I never quite thought so,” said 
Little Dorrit, more to herself than him. 

“ I did wonder at it a little.” 

“ Well !” said Clennam, abiding by# 
the feeling that had fallen on him in the 
avenue on the night of the roses, — the 
feeling that he was an older man, who 
had done with that tender part of life, 
— “ I found out my mistake, and I 
thought about it a little — in short, a 
good deal — and got wiser. Being 
wiser, I counted up my years, and con- 
sidered what I am, and looked back, 
and looked forward, and found that I 
should soon be gray. I found that I 
had climbed the hill, and passed the 
level ground upon the top, and was de- 
scending quickly.” 

If he had known the sharpness of the 
pain he caused the patient heart in 
speaking thus ! While doing it, too, 
with the purpose of easing and serving 
her. 

“ I found that the day when any such 
thing would have been graceful in me, 
or good in me, or hopeful or happy for 
me, or any one in connection with me, 
was gone, and would never shine 
again.” 


222 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


Oh ! If he had known, if he had 
known ! If he could have seen the 
dagger in his hand, and the cruel 
wounds it struck in the faithful bleeding 
breast of his Little Dorrit ! 

“ All that is over, and I have turned 
my face from it. Why do I speak of 
this to Little Dorrit ? Why do I show 
you, my child, the space of years that 
there is between us, and recall to you 
that I have passed, by the amount of 
your whole life, the time that is present 
to you ? ” 

“ Because you trust me, I hope. Be- 
cause you know that nothing can touch 
you without touching me ; that noth- 
ing can make you happy or unhappy, 
but it must make me, who am so grate- 
ful to you, the same.” 

He heard the thrill in her voice, he 
saw her earnest face, he saw her clear 
true eyes, he saw the quickened bosom 
that would have joyfully thrown itself be- 
fore him to receive a mortal wound di- 
rected at his breast, with the dying cry, 
“ I love him ! ” and the remotest suspi- 
cion of the truth never dawned upon his 
mind. No. He saw the devoted little 
creature with her worn shoes, in her 
common dress, in her jail home ; a slen- 
der child in body, a strong heroine in 
soul ; and the light of her domestic sto- 
ry made all else dark to him. 

“ For those reasons assuredly, Little 
Dorrit, but for another too. So far re- 
moved, so different, and so much older, 

I am the better fitted for your friend 
and adviser. I mean, I am the more 
easily to be trusted ; and any little con- 
straint that you might feel with another 
may vanish before me. Why have you 
kept so retired from me ? Tell me.” 

“ I am better here. My place and 
use are here. I am much better here,” 
said Little Dorrit, faintly. 

“ So you said that day, upon the 
bridge. I thought of it much after- 
wards. Have you no secret you could 
intrust to me, with hope and comfort, 
if you would?” 

“Secret? No, I have no secret,” 
said Little Dorrit, in some trouble. 

They had been speaking in low 
voices ; more because it was natural to 
what they said to adopt that tone than 
with any care to reserve it from Maggy 


at her work. All of a sudden Maggy 
stared again, and this time spoke : — 

“ I say ! Little mother ! ” 

“Yes, Maggy.” 

“ If you ain’t got no secret of your 
own to tell him, tell him that about 
the Princess. She had a secret, you 
know.” 

“The Princess had a secret?” said 
Clennam, in some surprise. “ What 
Princess was that, Maggy?” 

“ Lor ! How you do go and bother 
a gal of ten,” said Maggy, “ catching 
the poor thing up in that way. Who- 
ever said the Princess had a secret ? / 
never said so.” 

“I beg your pardon. I thought you 
did.” 

“No, I didn’t. How could I, when 
it was her as wanted to find it out ? It 
was the little woman as had the secret, 
and she was always a spinning at her 
wheel. And so she says to her, why 
do you keep it there? And so, the 
t’other one says to her, no I don’t ; and 
so, the t’other one says to her, yes, you 
do ; and then they both goes to the 
cupboard, and there it is. And she 
would n’t go into the Hospital, and so 
she died. You know, little mother; 
tell him that. For it was a reg’lar 
good secret, that was ! ” cried Maggy, 
hugging herself. 

Arthur looked at Little Dorrit for 
help to comprehend this, and was struck 
by seeing her so timid and red. But, 
when she told him that it was only a 
Fairy Tale she had one day made 
up for Maggy, and that there was 
nothing in it which she would n’t be 
ashamed to tell again to anybody else, 
even if she could remember it, he left 
the subject where it was. 

However, he returned to his own sub- 
ject, by first entreating her to see him 
oftener, and to remember that it w>as 
impossible to have a stronger interest 
in her welfare than he had, or to be 
more set upon promoting it than he 
was. When she answered fervently, 
she well knew that, she never forgot it, 
he touched upon his second and more 
delicate point, — the suspicion he had 
formed. 

“Little Dorrit,” he said, taking her 
hand again, and speaking lower than 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


22 3 


he had spoken yet, so that even Maggy 
in the small room could not hear him, 
“ another word. I have wanted very 
much to say this to you ; I have tried 
for opportunities. Don’t mind me, 
who, for the matter of years, might be 
your father or your uncle. Always 
think of me as quite an old man. I 
know that all your devotion centres in 
this room, and that nothing to the last 
will ever tempt you away from the du- 
ties you discharge here. If I were not 
sure of it, I should, before now, have 
implored you, and implored your father, 
to let me make some provision for you 
in a more suitable place. But, you may 
have an interest — I will not say, now, 
though even that might be — may have, 
at another time, an interest in some 
one else ; an interest not incompatible 
with your affection here.” 

She was very, very pale, and silently 
shook her head. 

“ It may be, dear Little Dorrit.” 

“No. No. No.” She shook her 
head, after each slow repetition of the 
word, with an air of quiet desolation 
that he remembered long afterwards. 
The time came when he remembered 
it well, long afterwards, within those 
prison walls, within that very room. 

“But, if it ever should be, tell me so, 
my dear child. Intrust the truth to 
me, point out the object of such an 
interest to me, and I will try with all 
the zeal and honor and friendship and 
respect that I feel for you, good Little 
Dorrit of my heart, to do you a lasting 
service.” 

“ O, thank you, thank you ! But, O 
no, O no, O no ! ” She said this, look- 
ing at him with her work-worn hands 
folded together, and in the same re- 
signed accents as before. 

“ I press for no confidence how. I 
only ask you to repose unhesitating 
trust in me.” 

“ Can I do less than that, when you 
are so good ! ” 

“ Then you will trust me fully? Will 
have no secret unhappiness, or anxiety, 
concealed from me?” 

“ Almost none.” 

“ And you have none now? ” 

She shook her head. But she was 
very pale. 


“ When I lie down to-night, and my 
thoughts come back — as they will, for 
they do every night, even when I have 
not seen you — to this sad place, I may 
believe that there is no grief beyond 
this room, now, and its usual occu- 
pants, which preys on Little Dorrit’s 
mind ? ” 

She seemed to catch at these words, 
— that he remembered, too, long after- 
wards, — and said, more brightly, “Yes, 
Mr. Clennam ; yes, you may ! ” 

The crazy staircase, usually not slow 
to give notice when any one was com- 
ing up or down, here creaked under a 
quick tread, and a further sound was 
heard upon it, as if a little steam-engine 
with more steam than it knew what to 
do with, were working towards the 
room. As it approached, which it did 
very rapidly, it labored with increased 
energy ; and, after knocking at ther 
door, it sounded as if it were stoop- 
ing down and snorting in at the key- 
hole. 

Before Maggy could open the door, 
Mr. Pancks, opening it from without, 
stood, without a hat and with his bare 
head in the wildest condition, looking 
at Clennam and Little Dorrit over her 
shoulder. He had a lighted cigar in 
his hand, and brought with him airs of 
ale and tobacco-smoke. 

“ Pancks the gypsy,” he observed, 
out of breath, “fortune-telling.” 

He stood dingily smiling, and breath- 
ing hard at them, with a most curious 
air. As if, instead of being his propri- 
etor’s grubber, he were the triumphant 
proprietor of the Marshalsea, the Mar- 
shal, all the turnkeys, and all the col- 
legians. In his great self-satisfaction 
he put his cigar to his lips (being evi- 
dently no smoker), and took such a 
pull at it, with his right eye shut up 
tight for the purpose, that lie under- 
went a convulsion of shuddering and 
choking. But even in the midst of 
that paroxysm, he still essayed to re- 
peat his favorite introduction of him- 
self, “ Pa-ancks the gy-ypsy, fortune- 
telling.” 

“ I am spending the evening with the 
rest of ’em,” said Pancks. “I ’ve been 
singing. I ’ve been taking a part in 
White sand and gray sand. / don’t 


224 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


know anything about it. Never mind. 
I ’ll take any part in anything. It ’s all 
the same, if you ’re loud enough.” 

At first Clennam supposed him to be 
intoxicated. But he soon perceived 
that, though he might be a little the 
worse (or better) for ale, the staple of 
his excitement was not brewed from 
malt, or distilled from any grain or 
berry. 

“How d’ye do, Miss Dorrit?” said 
Pancks. “ I thought you would n’t 
mind my running round, and looking 
in for a moment. Mr. Clennam I 
heard was here from Mr. Dorrit. How 
are you, sir? ” 

Clennam thanked him, and said he 
was glad to see him so gay. 

“ Gay ! ” said Pancks. “ I ’m in 
wonderful feather, sir. I can’t stop a 
minute, or I shall be missed, and I 
don’t want ’em to miss me. — Eh, Miss 
Dorrit? ” 

He seemed to have an insatiate de- 
light in appealing to her, and looking 
at her ; excitedly sticking his hair up at 
the same moment, like a dark species 
of cockatoo. 

“ I haven’t been here half an hour. 
I knew* Mr. Dorrit was in the chair, 
and I said, ‘ I ’ll go and support him ! ’ 
I ought to be down in Bleeding Heart 
Yard by rights ; but I can worry them 
to-morrow. — Eh, Miss Dorrit?” 

His little black eyes sparkled electri- 
cally. His very hair, seemed to sparkle, 
as he roughened it. He was in that 
highly charged state that one might 
have expected to draw sparks and snaps 
from him by presenting a knuckle to 
any part of his figure. 

“ Capital company here,” said 
Pancks. — “ Eh, Miss Dorrit? ” 

She was half afraid of him, and ir- 
resolute what to say. He laughed, 
with a nod towards Clennam. 

“Don’t mind him, Miss Dorrit. 
He’s one of us. We agreed that you 
shouldn’t take on to mind me before 
people, but we didn’t mean Mr. Clen- 
nam. He’s one of us. He’s in it. 
Ain’t you, Mr. Clennam? — Eh, Miss 
Dorrit?” 

The excitement of this strange crea- 
ture was fast communicating itself to 
Clennam. Little Dorrit, with amaze- 


ment, saw this, and observed that they 
exchanged quick looks. 

“I was making a remark,” said 
Pancks, “but I declare I forget what it 
was. O, I know ! Capital company 
here. I ’ve been treating ’em all 
round. — Eh, Miss Dorrit ? ” 

“Very generous of you,” she re- 
turned, noticing another of the quick 
looks between the two. 

“Not at all,” said Pancks. “Don’t 
mention it. I ’m coming into my prop- 
erty, that ’s the fact. I can afford to be 
liberal. I think I ’ll give ’em a treat 
here. Tables laid in the yard. Bread 
in stacks. Pipes in fagots. Tobacco 
in hayloads. Roast - beef and plum- 
pudding for every one. Quart of dou- 
ble stout a head. Pint of wine too, if 
they like it, and the authorities give 
permission. — Eh, Miss Dorrit? ” 

She was thrown into such a confusion 
by his manner, or rather by Clennam’s 
growing understanding of his manner 
(for she looked to him after every fresh 
appeal and cockatoo demonstration on 
the part of Mr. Pancks), that she only 
moved her lips in answer, without form- 
ing any word. 

“And O, by the by ! ” said Pancks. 
“ You were to live to know what was 
behind us on that little hand of yours. 
And so you shall, you shall, my darling. 
— Eh, Miss Dorrit ? ” 

He had suddenly checked himself. 
Where he got all the additional black 
prongs from, that now flew up all over 
his head, like the myriads of points 
that break out in the last change of a 
great firework, was a wonderful mys- 
tery. 

“ But I shall be missed,” — he came 
back to that, — “ and I don’t want ’em 
to miss me. Mr. Clennam, you and I 
made a bargain. I said you should find 
me stick to it. You shall find me stick 
to it now, sir, if you ’ll step out of the 
room a moment. Miss Dorrit, I wish 
you good night. Miss Dorrit, I wish 
you good fortune.” 

He rapidly shook her by both hands, 
and puffed down stairs. Arthur fol- 
lowed him with such a hurried step, 
that he had very nearly tumbled over 
him on the last landing, and rolled him 
down into the yard. 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


225 


“What is it, for Heaven’s sake!” 
Arthur demanded, when they burst out 
there both together. 

“ Stop a moment, sir. Mr. Rugg. 
Let me introduce him.” 

With those words he presented an- 
other man without a hat, and also with 
a cigar, and also surrounded with a 
halo of ale and tobacco-smoke, which 
man, though not so excited as himself, 
was in a state which would have been 
akin to lunacy but for its fading into so- 
ber method when compared with the 
rampancy of Mr. Pancks. 

“Mr. Clennam, Mr. Rugg,” said 
Pancks. “Stop a moment. Come to 
the pump.” 

They adjourned to the pump. Mr. 
Pancks, instantly putting his head under 
the spout, requested Mr. Rugg to take 
a good strong turn at the handle. Mr. 
Rugg complying .to the letter, Mr. 
Pancks came forth snorting and blow- 
ing to some purpose, and dried himself 
on his handkerchief. 

“ I am the clearer for that,” he gasped 
to Clennam, standing astonished. “ But, 
upon my soul, to hear her father mak- 
ing speeches in that chair, knowing what 
we know, and to see her up in that room 
in that dress, knowing what we know, 
is enough to — give me a back, Mr. 
Rugg — a little higher, sir, — that’ll 
do!” 

Then and there, on that Marshalsea 
pavement, in the shades of evening, 
did Mr. Pancks, of all mankind, fly 
over the head and shoulders of Mr. 
Rugg of Pentonville, General Agent, 
Accountant, and Recoverer of Debts. 
Alighting on his feet, he took Clennam 
by the button-hole, led him behind the 
pump, and pantingly produced from his 
pocket a bundle of papers. 

Mr. Rugg, also, pantingly produced 
from his pocket a bundle of papers. 

“ Stay ! ” said Clennam in a whisper. 
“You have made a discovery.” 

Mr. Pancks answered, with an unc- 
tion which there is no language to con- 
vey, “We rather think so.” 

“ Does it implicate any one ? ” 

“ How implicate, sir? ” 

“ In any suppression, or wrong deal- 
ing of any kind?” 

“ Not a bit ofit.” 


“Thank God!” said Clennam to 
himself. “ Now show me.” 

“You are to understand — ” snorted 
Pancks, -feverishly unfolding papers, 
and speaking in short high-pressure 
blasts of sentences. “ Where ’s the 
Pedigree? Where’s Schedule Number 
Four, Mr. Rugg? O, all right ! Here 
we are. —You are to understand that 
we are this very day virtually complete. 
We sha’n’t be legally for a day or two. 
Call it, at the outside, a week. We ’ve 
been at it, night and day, for I don’t 
know how long. Mr. Rugg, you know 
how long? Never mind. Don’t say. 
You’ll only confuse me. You shall 
tell her, Mr. Clennam. Not till we 
give you leave. Where ’s that rough 
total, Mr. Rugg? Oh ! Here we are ! 
There, sir ! That ’s what you ’ll have 
to break to her. That man’s your Fa- 
ther of the Marshalsea ! ” 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 

MRS. MERDLE’S COMPLAINT. 

Resigning herself to inevitable fate, 
by making the best of those people the 
Miggleses, and submitting- her philoso- 
phy to the draught upon it of which 
she had foreseen the likelihood in her 
interview with Arthur, Mrs. Gowan 
handsomely resolved not to oppose her 
son’s marriage. In her progress . to, 
and happy arrival at, this resolution, 
she was possibly influenced, not only 
by her maternal affections, but by three 
politic considerations. 

Of these, the first may have been, 
that her son had never signified the 
smallest intention to ask her consent, 
or any mistrust of his ability to dispense 
with it ; the second, that the pension 
bestowed upon her by a grateful coun- 
try (and a Barnacle) would be freed 
from any little filial inroads, when her 
Henry should be married to the darling 
pnly child of a man in very easy cir- 
cumstances ; the third, that Henry’s 
debts must clearly be paid down upon 
the altar-railing by his father-in-law. 
When, to these threefold points of pru- 
dence, there is added the fact that Mrs. 


*5 


226 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


Gowan yielded her consent the moment 
she knew of Mr. Meagles having yield- 
ed his, and that Mr. Meagles’s objec- 
tion to the marriage had been the sole 
obstacle in its way all along, it becomes 
the height of probability that the relict 
of the deceased Commissioner of noth- 
ing particular turned these ideas in her 
sagacious mind. 

Among her connections and acquaint- 
ances, however, she maintained her 
individual dignity and the dignity of the 
blood of the Barnacles, by diligently 
nursing the pretence that it was a most 
unfortunate business; that she was sad- 
ly cut up by it ; that this was a per- 
fect fascination, under which Henry 
labored ; that she had opposed it for a 
long time, but what could a mother do ; 
and the like. She had already called 
Arthur Clennam to bear witness to this 
fable, as a friend of the Meagles family; 
and she followed up the move by now 
impounding the family itself for the 
same purpose. In the first interview 
she accorded to Mr. Meagles, she slid- 
ed herself into the position of disconso- 
lately but gracefully yielding to irresist- 
ible pressure. With the utmost polite- 
ness and good-breeding, she feigned 
that it was she — not he — who had 
made the difficulty, and who at length 
gave way ; and that the sacrifice was 
hers, — not his. The same feint, with 
the same polite dexterity, she foisted 
on Mrs. Meagles, as a conjurer might 
have forced a card on that innocent 
lady ; and, when her future daughter- 
in-law was presented to her by her son, 
she said, on embracing her, “My dear, 
what have you done to Henry that has 
bewitched him so ! ” at the same time 
allowing a few tears to carry before 
them, in little pills, the cosmetic pow- 
der on her nose ; as a delicate but 
touching signal that she suffered much 
inwardly, for the show of composure 
with which she bore her misfortune. 

Among the friends of Mrs. Gowan 
(who piqued herself at once on being 
Society, and on maintaining intimate 
and easy relations with that Power),' 
Mrs. Merdle occupied a front row. 
True, the Hampton Court Bohemians, 
without exception, turned up their noses 
at Merdle as an upstart ; but they 


turned them down again, by falling flat 
on their faces to worship his wealth. 
In which compensating adjustment of 
their hoses, they were pretty much like 
Treasury, Bar, and Bishop, and all the 
rest of them. 

To Mrs. Merdle Mrs. Gowan re- 
paired on a visit of self- condolence, 
after having given the gracious consent 
aforesaid. She drove into town for the 
purpose, in a one-horse carriage, irrev- 
erently called at that period of English 
history a pill-box. It belonged to a 
job-master in a small way, who drove 
it himself, and who jobbed it by the 
day, or hour, to most of the old ladies 
in Hampton Court Palace ; but it was 
a point of ceremony, in that encamp- 
ment, that the whole equipage should 
be tacitly regarded as the private prop- 
erty of the jobber for the time being, 
and that the job-master should betray 
personal knowledge of nobody but the 
jobber in possession. So the Circum- 
locution Barnacles, who w r ere the larg- 
est job-masters in the universe, always 
pretended to know of" no other job but 
the job immediately in hand. 

Mrs. Merdle was at home, and was 
in her nest of crimson and gold, with 
the parrot on a neighboring stem watch- 
ing her with his head on one side, as if 
he took her for another splendid par- 
rot of a larger species. To whom en- 
tered Mrs. Gowan, with her favorite 
green fan, which softened the light on 
the spots of bloom. 

“ My dear soul,” said Mrs. Gowan, 
tapping the back of her friend’s hand 
with this fan, after a little indifferent 
conversation, “ you are my only com- 
fort. That affair of Henry’s that I 
told you of is to take place. Now, how 
does it strike you ? I am dying to know, 
because you represent and express So- 
ciety so well.” 

Mrs. Merdle reviewed the bosom 
which Society was accustomed to re- 
view ; and, having ascertained that 
show-window of Mr. Merdle’s and the 
London jewellers to be in good order, 
replied : — 

“As to marriage on the part of a 
man, my dear, Society requires that he 
should retrieve his fortunes by mar- 
riage. Society requires that he should 


LITTLE DORR IT. 


22 7 


gain by marriage. Society requires 
that he should found a handsome estab- 
lishment by marriage. Society does 
not see, otherwise, what he has to do 
with marriage. Bird, be quiet ! ” 

For the parrot on his cage above 
them, presiding over the conference as 
if he were a Judge (and indeed he 
looked rather like one), had wound up 
the exposition with a shriek. 

“ Cases there are,” said Mrs. Merdle, 
delicately crooking the little finger of 
her favorite hand, and making her re- 
marks neater by that neat action, — 
“ cases there are where a man is not 
young or elegant, and is rich, and has 
a handsome establishment already. 
Those are of a different kind. In such 
cases — ” 

Mrs. Merdle shrugged her snowy 
shoulders and put her hand upon the 
jewel-stand, checking a little cough, as 
though to add, “ why, a man looks out 
for this sort of thing, my dear.” Then 
the parrot shrieked again, and she put 
up her glass to look at him, and said, 
“ Bird ! Do be quiet ! ” 

“ But young men,” resumed Mrs. 
Merdle, “ and by young men you know 
what I mean, my love, — I mean peo- 
ple’s sons who have the world before 
them, — they must place themselves 
in a better position towards Society by 
marriage, or Society really will not have 
any patience with their making fools of 
themselves. Dreadfully worldly all- this 
sounds,” said Mrs. Merdle, leaning 
back in her nest and putting up her 
glass again, “ does it not ? ” 

“But it is true,” said Mrs. Go wan, 
with a highly moral air. 

“ My dear, it is not to be disputed 
for a moment,” returned Mrs. Merdle ; 
“ because Society has made up its mind 
on the subject, and there is nothing 
more to be said.. If we were in a more 
primitive state, if we lived under roofs 
of leaves, and kept cows and sheep and 
creatures, instead of banker’s accounts 
(which would be delicious ; my dear, I 
am pastoral to a degree by nature), 
well, and good. But we don’t live un- 
der leaves, and keep cows and sheep 
and creatures. I perfectly exhaust my- 
self, sometimes, in pointing out the dis- 
tinction to Edmund Sparkler.” 


Mrs. Gowan, lookingover her green fan 
when this young gentleman’s name was 
mentioned, replied as follows : — 

“ My love, you know the wretched 
state of the country, — those unfortu- 
nate concessions of John Barnacle’s ! — 
and you therefore know the reasons for 
my being as poor as Thingummy.” 

“ A Church-mouse ? ” Mrs. Merdle 
suggested with a smile. 

“ I was thinking of the other pro- 
verbial Church person, — Job,” said 
Mrs. Gowan. “Either will do. It 
•would be idle to disguise, consequently, 
that there is a wide difference between 
the position of your son and mine. I 
may add, too, that Henry has tal- 
ent — ” 

“Which Edmund certainly has not,” 
said Mrs. Merdle, with the greatest 
suavity. 

“ — And that his talent, combined 
with disappointment,” Mrs. Gowan 
went on, “ has led him into a pursuit 
which — ah dear me ! You know, my 
dear. Such being Henry’s different 
position, the question is, what is the 
most inferior class of marriage to which 
I can reconcile myself.” 

Mrs. Merdle was so much engaged 
with the contemplation of her arms 
(beautiful-formed arms, and the very 
thing for bracelets), that she omitted to 
reply for a while. Roused at length 
by the silence, she folded the arms, 
and with admirable presence of mind 
looked her friend full in the face, and 
said interrogatively, “Ye-es? And 
then ? ” 

“And then, my dear,” said Mrs. 
Gowan, not quite so sweetly as before, 
“ I should be glad to hear what you 
have to say to it.” 

Here the parrot, who had been stand- 
ing on one leg since he screamed last, 
burst into a fit of laughter, bobbed him- 
self derisively up and down on both 
legs, and finished by standing on one 
leg again, and pausing for a reply, with 
his head as much awry as he could pos- 
sibly twist it. 

“ Sounds mercenary, to ask what the 
gentleman is to get with the lady,” said 
Airs. Merdle ; “ but Society is perhaps 
a -little mercenary, you know, my dear.” 

“From what I can make out,” said 


228 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


Mrs. Gowan, “ I believe I may say that 
Henry will be relieved from debt — ” 

“ Much in debt?” asked Mrs. Mer- 
dle through her eye-glass. 

“Why, tolerably, I should think,” 
said Mrs. Gowan. 

“ Meaning the usual thing ; I under- 
stand ; just so,” Mrs. Merdle observed 
in a comfortable sort of way. 

“ And that the father will make them 
an allowance of three hundred a year, 
or perhaps altogether something more. 
Which, in Italy—” 

“Oh! Going to Italy?” said Mrs. 
Merdle. 

“ For Henry to study. You need be 
at no loss to guess why, my dear. That 
dreadful Art — ” 

True. Mrs. Merdle hastened to spare 
the feelings of her afflicted friend. She 
understood. Say no more ! 

“ And that,” said Mrs. Gowan, shak- 
ing her despondent head, — “ that ’s all. 
That,” repeated Mrs. Gowan, furling 
her green fan for the moment and tap- 
ping her chin with it (it was on the 
way to being a double chin ; might be 
called a chin and a half at present), 
— “ that ’s all ! On the death of the old 
people, I suppose there will be more to 
come ; but how it may be restricted or 
locked up, I don’t know. And as to 
that, they may live forbver. My dear, 
they are just the kind of people to do 
it.” 

Now, Mrs. Merdle, who really knew 
her friend Society pretty well, and who 
knew what Society’s mothers were, and 
what Society’s daughters were, and 
what Society’s matrimonial market was, 
and how prices ruled in it, and what 
scheming and counter-scheming took 
lace for the high buyers, and what 
argaining and huckstering went on, 
thought in the depths of her capacious 
bosom that this was a sufficiently good 
catch. Knowing, however, w'hat was 
expected of her, and perceiving the ex- 
act nature of the fiction to be nursed, 
she took it delicately in her arms, and 
put her required contribution of gloss 
upon it. 

“ And that is all, my dear ? ” said she, 
heaving a friendly sigh. “ Well, well ! 
The fault is not yours. You have noth- 
ing to reproach yourself with. You 


| must exercise the strength of mind for 
which you are renowned, and make the 
best of it.” 

“ The girl’s family have made,” said 
Mrs. Gowan, “ of course, the most stren- 
uous endeavors to — as the lawyers say 
— to have and to hold Henry.” 

“Of course they have, my dear,” 
said Mrs. Merdle. 

“ I have persisted in every possible 
objection, and have worried myself 
morning, noon, and night, for means to 
detach Henry from the connection.” 

“ No doubt you have, my dear,” 
said Mrs. Merdle. 

“ And all of no use. All has broken 
down beneath me. Now tell me, my 
love. Am I justified in at last yielding 
my most reluctant consent to Henry’s 
marrying among people not in Society ; 
or have I acted with inexcusable weak- 
ness? ” 

In answer to this direct appeal, Mrs. 
Merdle assured Mrs. Gowan (speaking 
as a Priestess of Society) that she was 
highly to be commended, that she was 
much to be sympathized with, that she 
had taken the highest of parts, and had 
come out of the furnace refined. And 
Mrs. Gowan, who of course saw through 
her own threadbare blind perfectly, and 
who knew that Mrs. Merdle saw through 
it perfectly, and who knew that Society 
would see through it perfectly, came 
out of this form, notwithstanding, as 
she had gone into it, with immense 
complacency and gravity. 

The conference was held at four or 
five o’clock in the afternoon, when all 
the region of Harley Street, Cavendish 
Square, was resonant of carriage wheels 
and double-knocks. It had reached this 
point when Mr. Merdle came home, 
from his daily occupation of causing the 
British name to be more and more re- 
spected in all parts of the civilized globe, 
capable of the appreciation of world- 
wide commercial enterprise and gigantic 
combinations of skill and capital. For, 
though nobody knew with the least pre- 
cision what Mr. Merdle’s business was, 
except that it was to coin money, these 
were the terms in which everybody de- 
fined it on all ceremonious occasions, 
and which it was the last new polite 
reading of the parable of the camel and 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


229 


the needle’s eye to accept without in- 
quiry. 

For a gentleman who had this splendid 
work cut out for him, Mr. Merdle 
looked a little common, and rather as if, 
in the course of his vast transactions, he 
had accidentally made an interchange 
of heads with some inferior spirit. He 
presented himself before the two ladies, 
in the course of a dismal stroll through 
his mansion, which had no apparent ob- 
ject but escape from the presence of the 
chief butler. 

“ 1 beg your pardon,” he said, stop- 
ping short in confusion; “I didn’t 
know there was anybody here but the 
parrot.” 

However, as Mrs. Merdle said, “ You 
can come in ! ” and as Mrs. Gowan said 
she was just going, and had already 
risen to take her leave, he came in, and 
stood looking out at a distant window, 
with his hands crossed under his un- 
easy coat-cuffs, clasping his wrists as if 
he were taking himself into custody. 
In this attitude he fell directly into a 
revery, from which he was only aroused 
by his wife’s calling to him from her 
ottoman, when they had been for some 
quarter of an hour alone. 

“Eh? Yes?” said Mr. Merdle, 
turning towards her. “What is it?” 

“ What is it? ” repeated Mrs. Merdle. 
“It is, I suppose, that you have not 
heard a word of my complaint.” 

“Your complaint, Mrs. Merdle?” 
said Mr. Merdle. “ I did n’t know that 
you were suffering from a complaint. 
What complaint?” 

“A complaint of you,” said Mrs. 
Merdle. 

“ Oh ! A complaint of me,” said Mr. 
Merdle. “What is the — what have I 
— what may you have to complain of in 
me, Mrs. Merdle? ” 

In his withdrawing, abstracted, pon- 
dering way, it took him some time to 
shape this question. As a kind of faint 
attempt to convince himself that he was 
the master of the house, he concluded 
by presenting his forefinger to the par- 
rot, who expressed his opinion on that 
subject by instantly driving his bill into 
it. 

“You were saying, Mrs. Merdle,” 
said Mr. Merdle, with his wounded fin- 


ger in his mouth, “ that you had a com- 
plaint against me ? ” 

“ A complaint which I could scarcely 
show the justice of more emphatically, 
than by having to repeat it,” said Mrs. 
Merdle. “ I might as well have stated 
it to the wall. I had far better have 
stated it to the bird. He would at least 
have screamed.” 

“You don’t want me to scream, Mrs. 
Merdle, I suppose,” said Mr. Merdle, 
taking a chair. 

“ Indeed I don’t know,” retorted 
Mrs. Merdle, “but that you had better 
do that, than be so moody and dis- 
traught. One would at least know that 
you were sensible of what was going on 
around you.” 

“A man might scream, and yet not be 
that, Mrs. Merdle,” said Mr. Merdle, 
heavily. 

“ And might be dogged, as you are at 
present, without screaming,” returned 
Mrs. Merdle. “ That ’s very true. If 
you wish to know the complaint I make 
against you, it is, in so many plain 
words, that you really ought not to go 
into Society, unless you can accommo- 
date yourself to Society.” 

Mr. Merdle, so twisting his hands 
into what hair he had upon his head 
that he seemed to lift himself up by it 
as he started out of his chair, cried, — 

“Why, in the name of all the infer- 
nal powers, Mrs. Merdle, who does 
more for Society than I do? Do you 
see these premises, Mrs. Merdle? Do 
you see this furniture, Mrs. Merdle? 
Do you look in the glass and see your- 
self, Mrs. Merdle ? Do you know the 
cost of all this, and who it ’s all pro- 
vided for? And yet will you tell me 
that I ought n’t to go into Society ? I, 
who shower money upon it in this way ? 
I, who might be almost said — to — to 
— to harness myself to a watering-cart 
full of money, and go about, saturating 
Society, every day of my life?” 

“ Pray don’t be violent, Mr. Merdle,” 
said Mrs. Merdle. 

“ Violent ? ” said Mr. Merdle. “ You 
are enough to make me desperate. You 
don’t know half of what I do to accom- 
modate Society. You don’t know any- 
thing of the sacrifices I make for it.” 

“ I know,” returned Mrs. Merdle, 


230 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


“ that you receive the best in the land. 
I know that you move in the whole 
Society of the country. And I believe 
I know (indeed not to make any ridicu- 
lous pretence about it, I know I know) 
who sustains you in it, Mr. Merdle.” 

“ Mrs. Merdle,” retorted that gentle- 
man, wiping his dull red and yellow 
face. “ I know that, as well as you do. 
If you were not an ornament to Society, 
and if I was not a benefactor to Society, 
you and I would never have come to- 
gether. When I say a benefactor to it, 
I mean a person w r ho provides it with 
all sorts of expensive things to eat and 
drink and look at. But, to tell me that 
I am not fit for it after ail I have done 
for it, — after all I have done for it,” 
repeated Mr. Merdle, with a wild em- 
phasis that made his wife lift up her 
eyelids, “after all — all! — to tell me 
I have no right to mix with it after all, 
is a pretty reward.” 

“ I say,” answered Mrs. Merdle, com- 
posedly, “ that you ought to make your- 
self fit for it by being more degage , and 
less preoccupied. There is a positive 
vulgarity in carrying your business 
affairs about with you as you do.” 

“ How do I carry them about, Mrs. 
Merdle?” asked Mr. Merdle. 

“ How do you carry them about?” 
said Mrs. Merdle. “ Look at yourself 
in the glass.” 

Mr. Merdle involuntarily turned his 
eyes in the direction of the nearest 
mirror, and asked, with a slow deter- 
mination of his turbid blood to his tem- 
ples, whether a man was to be called to 
account for his digestion ? 

“ You have a physician,” said Mrs. 
Merdle. 

“ He does me no good,” said Mr. 
Merdle. 

Mrs. Merdle changed her ground. 

“ Besides,” said she, “your digestion 
is nonsense. I don’t speak of your 
digestion. I speak of your manner.” 

“Mrs. Merdle,” returned her hus- 
band, “ I look to you for that. You 
supply manner, and I supply money.” 

“ 1 don’t expect you,” said Mrs. 
Merdle, reposing easily among her cush- 
ions, “ to captivate people. I don’t 
want you to take any trouble upon your- 
self, or to try to be fascinating. I sim- 


ply request you to care about nothing, 
— or to seem to care about nothing, — 
as everybody else does.” 

“ Do I ever say I care about any- 
thing?” asked Mr. Merdle. 

“ Say ? No ! Nobody would attend 
to you if you did. But you show it.” 

“Show what? What do I show?” 
demanded Mr. Merdle, hurriedly. 

“ I have already told you. You show 
that you carry your business cares and 
projects about, instead of leaving them 
in the City, or wherever else they be- 
long to,” said Mrs. Merdle. “ Or 
seeming to. Seeming would be quite 
enough : I ask no more. Whereas you 
could n’t be more occupied with your 
day’s calculations and combinations 
than you habitually show yourself to be, 
if you were a carpenter.” 

“ A carpenter ! ” repeated Mr. Mer- 
dle, checking something like a groan. 
“I shouldn’t so much mind being a 
carpenter, Mrs. Merdle.” 

“ And my complaint is,” pursued the 
lady, disregarding the low remark, 
“ that it is not the tone of Society, and 
that you ought to correct it, Mr. Merdle. 
If you have any doubt of my judgment, 
ask even Edmund Sparkler.” The 
door of the room had opened, and Mrs. 
Merdle now surveyed the head of her 
son through her glass. “ Edmund ; 
we want you here.” 

Mr. Sparkler, who had merely put in 
his head and looked round the room 
without entering (as if he- were search- 
ing the house for that young lady with 
no nonsense about her), upon this fol- 
lowed up his head with his body, and 
stood before them. To whom, in a few 
easy words adapted to his capacity, Mrs. 
Merdle stated the question at issue. 

The young gentleman, after anxiously 
feeling his shirt-collar as if it were his 
pulse and he were hypochondriacal, ob- 
served “ That he had heard it noticed by 
fellers.” 

“ Edmund Sparkler has heard it 
noticed,” said Mrs. Merdle, with lan- 
guid triumph. “ Why no doubt every- 
body has heard it noticed ! ” Which m 
truth was no unreasonable inference ; 
seeing that Mr. Sparkler would proba- 
bly be the last person, in any assem- 
blage of the human species to receive 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


231 


an impression from anything that passed 
in his presence. 

“ And Edmund Sparkler will tell you, 

I dare say,” said Mrs Merdle, waving 
her favorite hand towards her husband, 
“ how he has heard it noticed.” 

“ I could n’t,” said Mr. Sparkler, after 
feeling his pulse as before, — “couldn’t 
undertake to say what led to it, — ’cause 
memory desperate loose. But being in 
company with the brother of a doosed 
fine gal, — well educated too, — with no 
biggodd nonsense about her, — at the 
period alluded to — ” 

“There! Never mind the sister,” 
remarked Mrs. Merdle, a little impa- 
tiently. “What did the brother say?” 

“ Did n’t say a word, ma’am,” an- 
swered Mr. Sparkler. “ As silent a 
feller as myself. Equally hard up for a 
remark.” 

“Somebody said something,” re- 
turned Mrs. Merdle. “ Never mind 
who it was.” 

(“ Assure you I don’t in the least,” 
said Mr. Sparkler.) 

“ But tell us what it was.” 

Mr. Sparkler referred to his pulse 
again, and put himself through some 
severe mental discipline before he re- 
plied, — 

“ Fellers referring to my Governor, — 
expression not my own, — occasionally 
compliment my Governor in a very 
handsome way on being immensely rich 
and knowing, — perfect phenomenon of 
buyer and banker and that, — but say 
the shop sits heavily on him. Say he 
carries the shop about, on his back 
rather, — like Jew clothesman with too 
much business.” 

“Which,” said Mrs. Merdle, rising, 
with her floating drapery about her, “ is 
exactly my complaint. Edmund, give 
me your arm up stairs.” 

Mr. Merdle, left alone to meditate on 
a better conformation of himself to So- 
ciety, looked out of nine windows in 
succession, and appeared to see nine 
wastes of space. When he had thus 
entertained himself, he went down 
stairs, and looked intently at all the 
carpets on the ground-floor ; and then 
came up stairs again, and looked intent- 
ly at all the carpets on the first floor ; as 
if they were gloomy depths, in unison 


with his oppressed soul. Through all 
the rooms he wandered, as he always 
did, like the last person on earth who 
had any business to approach them. 
Let Mrs. Merdle announce, with all 
her might, that she was at Home ever 
so many nights in a season, she could 
not announce more widely and unmis- 
takably than Mr. Merdle did that he 
was never at home. 

At last he met the chief butler, the 
sight of which splendid retainer always 
finished him. Extinguished by this 
great creature, he sneaked to his dress- 
ing-room, and there remained shut up 
until he rode out to dinner, with Mrs. 
Merdle, in her own handsome chariot. 
At dinner, he was envied and flattered 
as a being of might, was Treasuried, 
Barred, and Bishoped, as much as he 
would ; and an hour after midnight 
came home alone, and being instantly 
put out again in his own hall, like a 
rushlight, by the chief butler, went 
sighing to bed. 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 

A SHOAL OF BARNACLES. 

Mr. Henry Gowan and the dog 
were established frequenters of the cot- 
tage, and the day was fixed for the 
wedding. There was to be a convoca- 
tion of Barnacles on the occasion ; in 
order that that very high and very large 
family might shed as much lustre on 
the marriage as so dim an event was 
capable of receiving. 

To have got the whole Barnacle fam- 
ily together would have been impossible 
for two reasons. Firstly, because no 
building could have held all the mem- 
bers and connections of that illustrious 
house. Secondly, because wherever 
there was a square yard of ground in 
British occupation, under the sun or 
moon, with a public post upon it, 
sticking to that post was a Barnacle. 
No intrepid ' navigator could plant a 
flag-staff upon any spot of earth, and 
take possession of it in the British name, 
but to that spot of earth, so soon as the 
discovery was known, the Circumlocu- 


232 


LITTLE DORR IT. 


tion Office sent out a Barnacle and a 
despatch-box. Thus the Barnacles were 
all over the world, in every direction, — 
despatch-boxing the compass. 

But, while the so-potent art of Pros- 
pero himself would have failed in sum- 
moning the Barnacles from every speck 
of ocean and dry land on which there 
was nothing (except mischief) to be 
done, and anything to be pocketed, it 
was perfectly feasible to assemble a 
good many Barnacles. This, Mrs. Gow- 
an applied herself to do ; calling on Mr. 
Meagles frequently, with new additions 
to the list, and holding conferences with 
that gentleman when he was not en- 
gaged (as he generally was at this pe- 
riod) in examining and paying the debts 
of his future son-in-law, in the apart- 
ment of the scales and scoop. 

One marriage guest there was, in 
reference to whose presence Mr. Mea- 
gles felt a nearer interest and concern 
than in the attendance of the most ele- 
vated Barnacle expected ; though he 
was far from insensible of the honor of 
having such company. This guest was 
Clennam. But Clennam had made a 
promise he held sacred, among the trees 
that summer night, and, in the chivalry 
of his heart, regarded it as binding him 
to many implied obligations. In for- 
getfulness of himself, and delicate ser- 
vice to her on all occasions, he was 
never to fail ; to begin it, he answered 
Mr. Meagles, cheerfully, “I shall come, 
of course.” 

His partner, Daniel Doyce, was some- 
thing of a stumbling-block in Mr. Mea- 
gles's way, the worthy gentleman being 
not at all clear in his own anxious mind 
but that the mingling of Daniel with 
official Barnacleism might produce 
some explosive combination, even at a 
marriage breakfast. The national of- 
fender, however, lightened him of his 
uneasiness by coming down to Twick- 
enham to represent that he begged, with 
the freedom of an old friend, and as a 
favor to one, that he might not be in- 
vited. “For,” said he, “as my busi- 
ness with this set of gentlemen was to 
do a public duty and a public service, 
and as their business with me was to 
prevent it by wearing my soul out, I 
think we had better not eat and drink 


together with a show of being of one 
mind.” Mr. Meagles was much amused 
by his friend’s oddity ; and patronized 
him with a more protecting air of al- 
lowance than usual, when he rejoined, 

“ Well, well, Dan, you shall have your 
own crotchety way.” 

To Mr. Henry Gowan, as the time 
approached, Clennam tried to convey 
by all quiet and unpretending means, 
that he was frankly and disinterestedly 
desirous of tendering him any friend- 
ship he would accept. Mr. Gowan 
treated him in return with his usual 
ease, and with his usual show of con- 
fidence, which was no confidence at all. 

“ You see, Clennam,” he happened 
to remark in the course of conversation 
one day, when they were walking near 
the cottage within a week of the mar- 
riage. “ I am a disappointed man. 
That you know already.” 

“ Upon my word,” said Clennam, a 
little embarrassed, “ I scarcely know 
how.” 

“ Why,” returned Gowan. “ I be- • 
long to a clan, or a clique, or a family, 
or a connection, or whatever you like to 
call it, that might have provided for me 
in any one of fifty ways, and that took 
it into its head not to do it at all. So 
here I am, a poor devil of an artist.” 

Clennam was beginning, “ But on the 
other hand — ” whenGowan tookhim up. 

“ Yes, yes, I know. I have ’the good 
fortune of being beloved by a beautiful 
and charming girl whom I love with all 
my heart.” 

(“Is there much of it?” Clennam 
thought. And as he thought it, felt 
ashamed of himself.) 

“ And of finding a father-in-law who 
is a capital fellow and a liberal good old 
boy. Still,' I had other prospects washed 
and combed into my childish head when 
it was washed and combed for me, and I 
took them to a public school when I 
washed and. combed it for myself, and 
I am here without them, and thus I 
am a disappointed man.” 

Clennam thought (and as he thought 
it, again felt ashamed of himself), was 
this notion of being disappointed in 
life, an assertion of station which the 
bridegroom brought into the family as 
his property, having already carried it 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


233 


detrimentally into his pursuit? And 
was it a hopeful or a promising thing 
anywhere ? 

“ Not bitterly disappointed, I think,” 
he said aloud. 

“ Hang it, no ; not bitterly,” laughed 
Gowan. “My people are not worth 
that, — though they are charming fel- 
lows, and 1 have the greatest affection 
for them. Besides, it ’s pleasant to 
show them that I can do without 
them, and that they may all go to the 
Devil. And besides, again, most men 
are disappointed in life, somehow or 
other, and influenced by their disap- 
pointment. But it ’s a dear good 
world, and I love it ! ” 

“ It lies fair before you now,” said 
Arthur. 

“ Fair as this summer river,” cried 
the other, with enthusiasm, “ and by 
Jove I glow with admiration of it, 
and with ardor to run a race in it. 
It’s the best of old worlds ! And my 
calling ! The best of old callings, 
is n’t it ? ” 

“ Full of interest and ambition, I con- 
ceive,” said Clennam. 

“And imposition,” added Gowan, 
laughing ; “ we won’t leave out the 
imposition. I hope I may not break 
down in that ; but there, my being a 
disappointed man may show itself. I 
may not be able to face it out grave- 
ly enough. Between you and me, I 
think there is some danger of my be- 
ing just enough soured not to be able 
to do that.” 

“ To do what ? ” asked Clennam. 

“ To keep it up. To help myself in 
my turn, as the man before me helps 
himself in his, and pass the bottle of 
smoke. To keep up the pretence as 
to labor, and study, and patience, and 
being devoted to my art, and giving up 
many solitary days to it, and abandon- 
ing many pleasures for it, and living in 
it, and ail the rest of it, — in short, to 
pass the bottle of smoke, according to 
rule.” 

“ But it is well for a man to respect 
his own vocation, whatever it is ; and to 
think himself bound to uphold it, and 
to claim for it the respect it deserves ; 
is it not?” Arthur reasoned. “And 
your vocation, Gowan, may really de- 


mand this suit and service. I confess 
I should have thought that all Art did.” 

“ What a good fellow you are, Clen- 
nam ! ” exclaimed the other, stopping 
to look at him, as if with irrepressible 
admiration. “ What a capital fellow ! 
You have never been disappointed. 
That ’s easy to see.” 

It would have been so cruel if he had 
meant it, that Clennam firmly resolved 
to believe he did not mean it. Gowan, 
without pausing, laid his hand upon his 
shoulder, and laughingly and lightly 
went on : — 

“ Clennam, I don’t like to dispel your 
generous visions, and I would give any 
money (if I had any) to live in such a 
rose-colored mist. But what I do in my 
trade, I do to sell. What all we fellows 
do, we do to sell. If we did n’t want to 
sell it for the most we can get for it, we 
should n’t do it. Being work, it has to 
be done ; but it ’s easily enough done. 
All the rest is hocus-pocus. Now here ’s 
one of the advantages or disadvantages 
of knowing a disappointed man. You 
hear the truth.” 

Whatever he had heard, and whether 
it deserved that name or another, it 
sank into Clennam’s mind. It so took 
root there, that he began to fear Henry 
Gowan would always be a trouble to 
him, and that so far he had gained little 
or nothing from the dismissal of No- 
body, with all his inconsistencies, anxie- 
ties, and contradictions. He found a 
contest still always going on in his 
breast, between his promise to keep Gow- 
an in none but good aspects before the 
mind of Mr. Meagles, and his enforced 
observation of Gowan in aspects that 
had no good in them. Nor could he 
quite support his own conscientious 
nature against misgivings that he dis- 
torted and discolored him, by remind- 
ing himself that he never sought those 
discoveries, and that he would have 
avoided them with willingness and 
great relief. For, he never could for- 
get what had been ; and he knew that 
he had once disliked Gowan for no better 
reason than that he had come in his way. 

Harassed by these thoughts, he now 
began to wish the marriage over, Gow- 
an and his young wife gone, and him- 
self left to fulfil his promise, and dis- 


234 


LITTLE DORR IT. 


charge the generous function he had 
accepted. This last week was, in truth, 
an uneasy interval for the whole house. 
Before Pet, or before Gowan, Mr. 
Meagles was radiant; but Clennam 
had more than once found him alone, 
with his view of the scales and scoop 
much blurred, and had often seen him 
look after the lovers, in the garden or 
elsewhere when he was not seen by 
them, with the old clouded face on 
which Gowan had fallen like a shadow. 
In the arrangement of the house for the 
great occasion, many little reminders 
of the old travels of the father and 
mother and daughter had to be dis- 
turbed, and passed from hand to hand ; 
and sometimes, in the midst of these 
mute witnesses to the life they had had 
together, even Pet herself would yield 
to lamenting and weeping. Mrs. Mea- 
gles, the blithest and busiest of moth- 
ers, went about singing and cheering 
everybody ; but she, honest soul, had 
her flights into store-rooms, where she 
would cry until her eyes were red, and 
would then come out, attributing that 
appearance to pickled onions and pep- 
per, and singing clearer than ever. 
Mrs. Tickit, finding no balsam for a 
wounded mind in Buchan’s Domestic 
Medicine, suffered greatly from low 
spirits, and from moving recollections 
of Minnie’s infancy. When the latter 
were powerful with her, she usually 
sent up secret messages importing that 
she was not in parlor condition as to 
her attire, and that she solicited a sight 
of “ her child ” in the kitchen ; there, 
she would bless her child’s face, and 
bless her child’s heart, and hug her 
child, in a medley of tears and congrat- 
ulations, chopping-boards, rolling-pins, 
and pie-crust, with the tenderness of an 
attached old servant, which is a very 
pretty tenderness indeed. 

But, all days come that are to be ; 
and the marriage-day was to be, and it 
came ; and with it came all the Barna- 
cles who were bidden to the feast. 

There was Mr. Tite Barnacle, from 
the Circumlocution Office and Mews 
Street, Grosvenor Square, with the 
expensive Mrs. Tite Barnacle nee 
Stiltstalking, who made the Quarter 
Days so long in coming, and the three 


expensive Miss Tite Barnacles, double- 
loaded with accomplishments and ready 
to go off, and yet not going off with the 
sharpness of flash and bang that might 
have been expected, but rather hang- 
ing fire. There was Barnacle Junior, 
also from the Circumlocution Office, 
leaving the Tonnage of the country, 
which he was somehow supposed to 
take under his protection, to look after 
itself, and, sooth to say, not at all im- 
pairing the efficiency of his protection 
by leaving it alone. There was the 
engaging Young Barnacle, deriving from 
the sprightly side of the family, also 
from the Circumlocution Office, gayly 
and agreeably helping the occasion 
along, and treating it, in his sparkling 
way, as one of the official forms and 
fees of the Church Department of How 
not to do it. There were three other 
Young Barnacles, from three other 
offices, insipid to all the senses, and 
terribly in want of seasoning, doing the 
marriage as they would have “done” 
the Nile, Old Rome, the new singer, or 
Jerusalem. 

But there was greater game than 
this. There was Lord Decimus Tite 
Barnacle himself, in the odor of Cir- 
cumlocution, — with the very smell of 
Despatch-Boxes upon him. Yes, there 
was Lord Decimus Tite Barnacle, who 
had risen to official heights on the 
wings of one indignant idea, and that 
was, My Lords, that I am yet to be 
told that it behooves a Minister of this 
free country to set bounds to the phi- 
lanthropy, to cramp the charity, to fetter 
the public spirit, to contract the enter- 
prise, to damp the independent self- 
reliance, of its people. That was, in 
other words, that this great statesman 
was always yet to be told that it be- 
hooved the Pilot of the ship to do any- 
thing but prosper in the private loaf 
and fish trade ashore, the crew being 
able, by dint of hard pumping, to keep 
the ship above water without him. On 
this sublime discovery, in the great art 
How not to do it, Lord Decimus had 
long sustained the highest glory of the 
Barnacle family ; and let any ill-advised 
member of either House but try How 
to do it, by bringing in a Bill to do it, 
that Bill was as good as dead and 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


235 


buried when Lord. Decimus Tite Bar- 
nacle rose up in his place, and solemnly 
said, soaring into indignant majesty as 
the Circumlocution cheering soared 
around him, that he was yet to be told, 
My Lords, that it behooved him as the 
Minister of this free country, to set 
bounds to the philanthropy, to cramp 
the charity, to fetter the public spirit, to 
contract the enterprise, to damp the 
independent self-reliance, of its people. 
The discovery of this Behooving Ma- 
chine was the discovery of the political 
perpetual motion. It never wore out, 
though it was always going round and 
round in all the State Departments. 

And there, with his noble friend and 
relative Lord Decimus, was William 
Barnacle, who had made the ever-fa- 
mous coalition with Tudor Stiltstalking, 
and who always kept ready his own 
particular recipe for How not to do it ; 
sometimes tapping the Speaker, and 
drawing it fresh out of him, with a 
“ First, I will beg you, sir, to inform 
the House what Precedent we have for 
the course into which the honorable 
gentleman would precipitate us”; some- 
times asking the honorable gentleman 
to favor him with his own version of 
the Precedent ; sometimes telling the 
honorable gentleman that he (William 
Barnacle) would search for a Prece- 
dent ; and oftentimes crushing the hon- 
orable gentleman flat on the spot, by 
telling him there was no Precedent. 
But, Precedent and Precipitate were, un- 
der all circumstances, the well-matched 
pair of battle-horses of this able Cir : 
cumlocutionist. No matter that the 
unhappy honorable gentleman had been 
trying in vain, for twenty-five years, to 
precipitate William Barnacle into this, 
— William Barnacle still put it to the 
House, and (at second-hand or so) to 
the country, whether he was to be pre- 
cipitated into this. No matter that it 
was utterly irreconcilable with the na- 
ture of things and course of events, 
that the wretched honorable gentleman 
could possibly produce a Precedent for 
this, — William Barnacle would never- 
theless thank the honorable gentleman 
for that ironical cheer, and would close 
with him upon that issue, and would 
tell him to his teeth that there was no 


Precedent for this. It might perhaps 
have been objected that the William 
Barnacle wisdom was not high wisdom 
or the earth it bamboozled would never 
have been made, or, if made in a rash 
mistake, would have remained blank 
mad. But, Precedent and Precipitate 
together frightened all objection out of 
most people. 

And there, too, was another Barnacle, 
a lively one, who had leaped through 
twenty places in quick succession, and 
was always in two or three at once, and 
who was the much-respected inventor 
of an art which he practised with great 
success and admiration in all Barnacle 
governments. This was, when he was 
asked a Parliamentary question on any 
one topic, to return an answer on any 
other. It had done immense service, 
and brought him into high esteem with 
the Circumlocution Office. 

And there too was a sprinkling of 
less distinguished Parliamentary Bar- 
nacles, who had not as yet got anything 
snug, and were going through their 
probation to prove their worthiness. 
These Barnacles perched upon stair- 
cases and hid in passages, waning their 
orders to make houses or not to make 
houses ; and they did all their hearing, 
and ohing, and cheering, and barking, 
under directions from the heads of the 
family; and they put dummy motions 
oh the paper in the way of other men’s 
motions, and they stalled disagreeable 
subjects off until late in the night and 
late in the session, and then with virtu- 
ous patriotism cried out that it was too 
late ; and they yvent down into the 
country, whenever they were sent, and 
swore that Lord Decimus had revived 
trade from a swoon and commerce from 
a fit, and had doubled the harvest of 
corn, quadrupled the harvest of hay, 
and prevented no end of gold flying out 
of the Bank. Also these Barnacles 
were dealt, by the heads of the family, 
like so many cards below the court- 
cards, to public meetings and dinners ; 
where they bore testimony to all sorts 
of services on the part of their noble 
and honorable relatives, and buttered 
the Barnacles on all sorts of toasts. 
And they stood-, under similar orders, 
at all sorts of elections ; and they 


236 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


turned out of their own seats, on the 
shortest notice and the most unreason- 
able terms, to let in other men ; and 
they fetched and carried, and toadied 
and jobbed, and corrupted, and ate 
heaps of dirt, and were indefatigable in 
the public service. And there was not 
a list, in all the Circumlocution Office, 
of places that might fall vacant any- 
where within half a century, from a 
lord of the Treasury to a Chinese con- 
sul, and up again to a governor-general 
of India, but, as applicants for such 
places, the names of some or of every 
one of these hungry and adhesive Bar- 
nacles were down. 

It was necessarily but a sprinkling of 
any class of Barnacles that attended 
the marriage, for there were not two 
score in all, and what is that subtracted 
from Legion ! But the sprinkling was 
a swarm in the Twickenham cottage, 
and filled it. A Barnacle (assisted by 
a Barnacle) married the happy pair, 
and it behooved Lord Decimus Tite 
Barnacle himself to conduct Mrs. M ea- 
gles to breakfast. 

The entertainment was not as agree- 
able and natural as it might have been. 
Mr. Meagles, hove down by his good 
company while he highly appreciated 
it, was not himself. Mrs. Gowan was 
herself, and that did not improve him. 
The fiction that it was not Mr. Meagles 
who had stood in the way, but that it 
was the Family greatness, and that the 
Family greatness had made a conces- 
sion, and there was now a soothing una- 
nimity, pervaded the affair, though it 
was never openly expressed. Then the 
Barnacles felt that they for their parts 
would have done with the Meagleses, 
when the present patronizing occasion 
was over ; and the Meagleses felt the 
same for their parts. Then Gowan as- 
serting his rights as a disappointed man 
who had his grudge against the family, 
and who perhaps had allowed his mother 
to have them there, as much in the hope 
that it might give them some annoyance 
as with any other benevolent object, 
aired his pencil and his. poverty osten- 
tatiously before them, and told them 
he hoped in time to settle a crust of 
bread and cheese on his wife, and that 
he begged such of them as (more for- 


tunate than himself) came in for any 
good thing, and could buy a picture, to 
please to remember the poor painter. 
Then Lord Decimus, who was a won- 
der on his own Parliamentary pedestal, 
turned out to be the windiest creature 
here : proposing happiness to the bride 
and bridegroom in a series of plati- 
tudes, that would have made the hair of 
any sincere disciple and believer stand 
on end ; and trotting, with the com- 
placency of an idiotic elephant, among 
howling labyrinths of sentences which 
he seemed to take for high-roads, and 
never so much as wanted to get out of. 
Then Mr. Tite Barnacle could not but 
feel that there was a person in company 
who would have disturbed his life-long 
sitting to Sir Thomas Lawrence in full 
official character, if such disturbance 
had been possible ; w'hile Barnacle 
Junior did, with indignation, commu- 
nicate to two vapid young gentlemen 
his relatives, that there was a feller here, 
look here, who had come to our Depart- 
ment without an appointment and said 
he wanted to know you know ; and that 
look here, if he was to break out now, 
as he might you know (for you never 
could tell what an ungentlemanly Radi- 
cal of that sort would be up to next), 
and was to say, look here, that he 
wanted to know this moment, you know, 
that would be Jolly ; would n’t it ? 

The pleasantest part of the occasion, 
by far, to Clennam, was the painfullest. 
When Mr. and Mrs. Meagles at last 
hung about Pet, in the room with the 
two pictures (where the company were 
not), before going with her to the 
threshold which she could never re- 
cross to be the old Pet and the old 
delight, nothing could be more natural 
and simple than the three were. Gow- 
an himself was touched, and answered 
Mr. Meagles’s, “ O Gowan, take care 
of her, take care of her ! ” with an 
earnest, “ Don’t be so broken-hearted, 
sir. By Heaven I will ! ” 

And so, with last sobs and last loving 
words, and a last look to Clennam of 
confidence in his promise, Pet fell back 
in the carriage, and her husband waved 
his hand, and they were away for 
Dover. Though not until the faithful 
Mrs. Tickit, in her silk gown and jet 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


237 


black curls, had rushed out from some 
hiding-place, and thrown both her 
shoes after the carriage ; an apparition 
which occasioned great surprise to the 
distinguished company at the win- 
dows. 

The said company being now relieved 
from further attendance, and the chief 
Barnacles being rather hurried (for 
they had it in hand just then to send 
a mail or two, which was in danger of 
going straight to its destination, beat- 
ing about the seas like the Flying 
Dutchman, and to arrange with com- 
plexity for the stoppage of a good deal 
of important business otherwise in peril 
of being done), went their several 
ways ; with all affability conveying to 
Mr. and Mrs. Meagles, that general 
assurance that what they had been 
doing there, they had been doing at a 
sacrifice for Mr. and Mrs. Meagles’s 
good, which they always conveyed to 
Mr. John Bull in their official con- 
descension to that most unfortunate 
creature. 

A miserable blank remained in the 
house, and in the hearts of the father 
and mother and Clennam. Mr. Mea- 
gles called only one remembrance to 
his aid, that really did him good. 

“ It ’s very gratifying, Arthur,” he 
said, “ after all, to look back upon.” 

“The past? ” said Glennam. 

“ Yes, — but I mean the company.” 

It had made him much more low and 
unhappy at the time, but now it really 
did him good. “ It ’s very gratifying,” 
he said, often repeating the remark in 
the course of the evening. “ Such high 
company ! ” 


CHAPTER XXXV. 

WHAT WAS BEHIND MR. PANCKS ON 
LITTLE DORRIT’S HAND. 

It was at this time that Mr. Pancks, 
in discharge of his compact with Clen- 
nam, revealed to him the whole of his 
gypsy story, and told him Little Dorrit’s 
fortune. Her father was heir at law to 
a great estate that had long lain un- 
known of, unclaimed, and accumulat- 
ing. His right was now clear, nothing 


interposed in his way, the Marshalsea 
gates stood open, the Marshalsea walls 
were down, a few flourishes of his pen 
and he was extremely rich. 

In his tracking out of the claim to its 
complete establishment, Mr. Pancks 
had shown a sagacity that nothing 
could baffle, and a patience and secre- 
cy that nothing could tire. “ I little 
thought, sir,” said Pancks, “when you 
and I crossed Smithfield that night, and 
I told you what sort of a Collector I 
was, that this would come of it. I little 
thought, sir, when I told you you were 
not of the Clennams of Cornwall, that 
I was ever going to tell you who were 
of the Dorrits of Dorsetshire.” He 
then went on to detail, How, having 
that name recorded in his note book, 
he was first attracted by the name alone. 
How, having often found two exactly 
similar names, even belonging to the 
same place, to involve no traceable con- 
sanguinity, near or distant, he did not 
at first give much heed to this ; except 
in the way of speculation as to what a 
surprising change w'ould be made in 
the condition of a little seamstress, if 
she could be shown to have any interest 
in so large a property. How he rather 
supposed himself to have pursued the 
idea into its next degree, because there 
was something uncommon in the quiet 
little seamstress, which pleased him and 
provoked his curiosity. How he had 
felt his way inch by inch, and “moled 
it out, sir,” (that was Mr. Pancks’s ex- 
pression,) grain by grain. How, in the 
beginning of the labor described by this 
new verb, and to render which the more 
expressive Mr. Pancks shut his eyes in 
pronouncing it and shook his hair over 
them, he had alternated from sudden 
lights and hopes to sudden darkness 
and no hopes, and back again, and 
back again. How he had made ac- 
quaintances in the Prison, expressly 
that he might come and go there as all 
other comers and goers did ; and how 
his first ray of light was unconsciously 
given him by Mr. Dorrit himself, and 
by his son : to both of whom he easily 
became known ; with both of whom he 
talked much, casually (“but always 
Moleingyou ’ll observe,” said Pancks); 
and from whom he derived, without 


238 


LITTLE D0RR1T. 


being at all suspected, two or three 
little points of family histoiy which, as 
he began to hold clews of his own, sug- 
gested others. How it had at length 
become plain to Mr. Pancks, that he 
had made a real discovery of the heir 
at law to a great fortune, and that his 
discovery had but to be ripened to le- 
gal fulness and perfection. How he 
had, thereupon, sworn his landlord, 
Mr. Rugg, to secrecy in a solemn man- 
ner, and taken him into Moleing part- 
nership. How they had employed John 
Chivery as their sole clerk and agent, 
seeing to whom he was devoted. And 
how, until the present hour, when au- 
thorities mighty iu the Bank and 
learned in the law declared their suc- 
cessful labors ended, they had confided 
in no other human being. 

“So if the whole thing had broken 
down, sir,” concluded Pancks, “at the 
very last, say the day before the other 
day when I showed you our papers in 
the Prison yard, or say that very day, 
nobody but ourselves would have been 
cruelly disappointed, or a penny the 
worse.” 

Clennam, who had been almost in- 
cessantly shaking hands with him 
throughout the narrative, was reminded 
by this to say, in an amazement which 
even the preparation he had had for 
the main disclosure scarcely smoothed 
down, “ My dear Mr. Pancks, this 
must have cost you a great sum of 
money.” 

“Pretty well, sir,” said the trium- 
phant Pancks. “ No trifle, though we 
did it as cheap as it could be done. 
And the outlay was a difficulty, let me 
tell you.” 

“A difficulty!” repeated Clennam. 
“ But the difficulties you have so won- 
derfully conquered in the whole busi- 
ness ! ” shaking his head again. 

“ I ’ll tell you how I did it,” said the 
delighted Pancks, putting his hair into 
a condition as elevated as himself. 
“ First, I spent all I had of my own. 
That wasn’t much.” 

“ I am sorry for it,” said Clennam ; 
“ not that it matters now, though. 
Then, what did you do ? ” 

“Then,” answered Pancks, “I bor- 
rowed a sum of my proprietor.” 


“Of Mr. Casby?” said Clennam. 
“ He ’s a fine old fellow.” 

“Noble old boy; ain’t he?” said 
Mr. Pancks, entering on a series of the 
driest of snorts. “ Generous old buck. 
Confiding old boy. Philanthropic old 
buck. Benevolent old boy ! Twenty 
per cent I engaged to pay him, sir. 
But we never do business for less, at 
our shop.” 

Arthur felt an awkward consciousness 
of having, in his exultant condition, 
been a little premature. 

“I said to that — boiling-over old 
Christian,” Mr. Pancks pursued, ap- 
pearing greatly to relish this descriptive 
epithet, “that I had got a little project 
on hand ; a hopeful one ; I told him a 
hopeful one ; which wanted a certain 
small capital. I proposed to him to lend 
me the money on my note. Which he 
did, at twenty : sticking the twenty on 
in a business-like way, and putting it 
into the note, to look like a part of the 
principal. If I had broken down after 
that, I should have been his grubber 
for the next seven years at half wages 
and double grind. But he ’s a perfect 
Patriarch ; and it would do a man good 
to serve him on such terms, — on any 
terms.” 

Arthur for his life could not have said 
with confidence whether Pancks really 
thought so or not. 

“ When that was gone, sir,” resumed 
Pancks, “and it did go, though I drib- 
bled it out like so much blood, I had 
taken Mr. Rugg into the secret. I pro- 
posed to.borrow of Mr. Rugg (or of Miss 
Rugg ; it ’s the same thing ; she made 
a little money by a speculation in the 
Common Pleas once). He lent it at 
ten, and thought that pretty high. 
But Mr. Rugg ’s a red-haired man, sir, 
and gets his hair cut. And as to the 
crown of his hat, it ’s high. And as to 
the brim of his hat, it ’s narrow. And 
there’s no more benevolence bubbling 
out of him , than out of a ninepin.” 

“ Your own recompense for all this, 
Mr. Pancks,” said Clennam, “ought 
to be a large one.” 

“ I don’t mistrust getting it, sir,” 
said Pancks. “ I have made no bar- 
gain. I owed you one on that score ; 
now, I have paid it. Money out of 


LITTLE DOER IT 


239 


pocket made good, time fairly allowed 
for, and Mr. Rugg’s bill settled, a 
thousand pounds would be a fortune to 
me. That matter I place in your hands. 
I authorize you, now, to break all this 
to the family in any way you think 
best. Miss Amy Dorrit will be with 
Mrs. Finching this morning. The soon- 
er done the better. Can’f be done too 
soon.” 

This conversation took place in Clen- 
nam’s bedroom, while he was yet in bed. 
For Mr. Pancks had knocked up the 
house and made his way in, very early 
in the morning ; and, without once sit- 
ting down or standing still, had deliv- 
ered himself of the whole of his details 
(illustrated with a variety of documents) 
at the bedside. He now said he would 
“go and look up Mr. Rugg,” from 
whom his excited state of mind appeared 
to require another back ; and bundling 
up his papers, and exchanging one more 
hearty shake of the hand with Clennam, 
he went at full speed down stairs, and 
steamed off. 

Clennam, of course, resolved to go di- 
rect to Mr. Casby’s. He dressed and 
got out so quickly, that he found himself 
at the corner of the patriarchal street 
nearly an hour before her time ; but he 
was not sorry to have the opportunity of 
calming himself with a leisurely walk. 

When he returned to the street, and 
had knocked at the bright brass knock- 
er, he was informed that she had come, 
and was shown up stairs to Flora’s 
breakfast-room. Little Dorrit was not 
there herself, but Flora was, and testi- 
fied the greatest amazement at seeing 
him. 

“ Good gracious, Arthur, — Doyce 
and Clennam ! ” cried that lady, “ who 
would have ever thought of seeing such 
a sight as this and pray excuse a wrap- 
per for upon my word I really never and 
a faded check too w'hich is worse but 
our little friend is making me a, not that 
I need mind mentioning it to you for 
you must know that there are such 
things a skirt, and having arranged that 
a trying on should take place after 
breakfast is the reason though I wish 
not so badly starched.” 

“ I ought to make an apology,” said 
Arthur, “for so early and abrupt a vis- 


it ; but you will excuse it when I tell 
you the cause.” 

“ In times forever fled Arthur,” re- 
turned Mrs. Finching, “ pray excuse me 
Doyce and Clennam infinitely more 
correct and though unquestionably dis- 
tant still ’tis distance lends enchantment 
to the view, at least I don’t mean that 
and if I did I suppose it would depend 
considerably on the nature of the view, 
but I ’m running on again and you put 
it all out of my head.” 

She glanced at him tenderly, and 
resumed, — 

“ In times forever fled I was going to 
say it would have sounded strange in- 
deed for Arthur Clennam — Doyce and 
Clennam naturally quite different — to 
make apologies for coming here at any 
time, but that is past and what is past 
can never be recalled except in his own 
case as poor Mr. F. said when he was 
in spirits Cucumber and therefore never 
ate it.” 

She was making the tea when Arthur 
came in, and now hastily finished that 
operation. 

“ Papa,” she said, all mystery and 
whisper, as she shut down the teapot 
lid, “is sitting prosingly breaking his 
new-laid egg in the back parlor over the 
City article exactly like the W oodpeck- 
er Tapping and need never know that 
you are here, and our little friend you 
are well aware may be fully trusted when 
she comes down from cutting out on the 
large table overhead.” 

Arthur then told her, in the fewest 
words, that it was their little friend he 
came to see ; and what he had to an- 
nounce to their little friend. At which 
astounding intelligence, Flora clasped 
her hands, fell into a tremble, and shed 
tears of sympathy and pleasure, like 
the good-natured creature she really 
was. 


“ For gracious sake let me get out of 
the way first,” said Flora, putting her 
hands to her ears, and moving towards 
the door, “ or I know I shall go off dead 
and screaming and make everybody 
worse, and the dear little thing only this 
morning looking so nice and neat and 
good and yet so poor and now a fortune 
is she really and deserves it too ! and 
might I mention it to Mr. F.’s Aunt 


240 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


Arthur not Doyce and Clennam for 
this once or if objectionable not on any 
account.” 

Arthur nodded his free permission, 
since Flora shut out all verbal commu- 
nication. Flora nodded in return to 
thank him, and hurried out of the 
room. 

Little Dorrit’s step was already on 
the stairs, and in another moment she 
was at the door. Do what he would to 
compose his face, he could not convey 
so much of an ordinary expression into 
it, but that the moment she saw it she 
dropped her work, and cried, “ Mr. 
Clennam ! What ’s the matter ! ” 

“ Nothing, nothing. That is, no mis- 
fortune has happened. I have come to 
tell you something, but it is a piece of 
great good-fortune.” 

“Good-fortune?” 

“ Wonderful fortune ! ” 

They stood in a window, and her 
eyes, full of light, were fixed upon his 
face. He put an arm about her, seeing 
her likely to sink down. She put a 
hand upon that arm, partly to rest upon 
it, and partly so to preserve their relative 
positions as that her intent look at him 
should be shaken by no change of at- 
titude in either of them. Her lips 
seemed to repeat, “Wonderful fortune?” 
He repeated it again, aloud. 

“Dear Little Dorrit ! Your father.” 

The ice of the pale face broke at the 
word, and little lights and shoots of ex- 
pression passed all over it. They were all 
expressions of pain. Her breath was 
faint and hurried. Her heart beat fast. 
He would have clasped the little figure 
closer, but he saw that the eyes ap- 
pealed to him not to be moved. 

“ Your father can be free within this 
week. He does not know it ; we must 
go to him from here, to tell him of it. 
Your father will be free within a few 
days. Your father will be free within 
a few hours. Remember we must go 
to him, from here, to tell him of it ! ” 

That brought her back. Her eyes 
were closing, but they opened again. 

“This is not all the good-fortune. 
This is not all the wonderful good- 
fortune, my dear Little Dorrit. Shall I 
tell you more? ” 

Her lips shaped, “Yes.” 


“ Your father will be no beggar when 
he is free. He will want for nothing. 
Shall I tell you more ? Remember ! 
He knows nothing of it ; we must go to 
him, from here, to tell him of it ! ” 

She seemed to entreat him for a little 
time. He held her in his arm, and, 
after a pause, bent down his ear to 
listen. 

“ Did you ask me to go on?” 

“Yes.” 

“ He will be a rich man. He is a 
rich man. A great sum of money is 
waiting to be paid over to him as his in- 
heritance ; you are all henceforth very 
wealthy. Bravest and best of children, 
I thank Heaven that you are re- 
warded ! ” 

As he kissed her, she turned her 
head towards his shoulder, and raised 
her arm towards his neck ; cried out, 
“ Father ! Father ! Father ! ” and 
swooned away. 

Upon which, Flora returned to take 
care of her, and hovered about her on a 
sofa, intermingling kind offices and in- 
coherent scraps of conversation in a 
manner so confounding, that whether 
she pressed the Marshalsea to take a 
spoonful of unclaimed dividends, for it 
would do her good ; or whether she 
congratulated Little Dorrit’s father on 
coming into possession of a hundred 
thousand smelling-bottles ; or whether 
she explained that she put seventy-five 
thousand drops of spirits of lavender 
on fifty thousand pounds of lump sugar, 
and that she entreated Little Dorrit to 
take that gentle restorative ; or wheth- 
er she bathed the foreheads of Doyce 
and Clennam in vinegar, and gave the 
late Mr. F. more air ; no one with any 
sense of responsibility could have un- 
dertaken to decide. A tributary stream 
of confusion, moreover, poured in from 
an adjoining bedroom, where Mr. F.’s 
Aunt appeared, from the sound of her 
voice, to be in a horizontal posture 
awaiting her breakfast ; and from which 
bower that inexorable lady snapped off 
short taunts, whenever she could get a 
hearing, as, “ Don’t believe it ’s his do- 
ing ! ” and “ He needn’t take no credit 
to himself for it ! ” and “ It ’ll be long 
enough, I expect, afore he ’ll give up 
any of his own money ! ” all designed 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


2 4 ! 


to disparage Clennam’s share in the 
discovery, and to relieve those inveter- 
ate feelings with which Mr. F.’s Aunt 
regarded him. 

But Little Dorrit’s solicitude to get 
to her father, and to carry the joyful 
tidings to him, and not to leave him in 
his jail a moment with this happiness in 
store for him and still unknown to him, 
did more for her speedy restoration 
than all the skill and attention ou earth 
could have' done. “ Come with me to 
my dear father. Pray come and tell my 
dear father ! ” were the first words she 
said. Her father, her father. She 
spoke of nothing but him, thought of 
nothing but him. Kneeling down and 
pouring out her thankfulness with up- 
lifted hands, her thanks were for her 
father. 

Flora’s tenderness was quite over- 
come by this, and she launched out 
among the cups and saucers into a won- 
derful flow of tears and speech. 

“I declare,” she sobbed, “ I never 
was so cut up since your mamma and 
my papa not Doyce and Clennam for 
this once but give the precious little 
thing a cup of tea and make her put it 
to her lips at least pray Arthur do, not 
even Mr. F.’s last illness for that was of 
another kind and gout is not a child’s 
affection though very painful for all par- 
ties and Mr. F. a martyr with his leg 
upon a rest and the wine trade in itself 
inflammatory for they will do it more or 
less among themselves and who can 
wonder, it seems like a dream I am sure 
to think of nothing at all this morning 
and now Mines of money is it really, 
but you must you know' my darling love 
because you never will be strong enough 
to tell him all about it upon teaspoons, 
mightn’t it be even best to try the di- 
rections of my own medical man for 
though the flavor is anything but agree- 
able still I force myself to do it as a 
prescription and find the benefit, you ’d 
rather not why no my dear I’d rather 
not but still I do it as a duty, every- 
body will congratulate you some in ear- 
nest and some not and many w’ill con- 
gratulate you with all their hearts but 
none more so I do assure you than from 
the bottom of my own I do myself 
though sensible of blundering and be- 

16 


ing stupid, and will be judged by Ar- 
thur not Doyce and Clennam for this 
once so good by darling and God bless 
you and may you be very happy and 
excuse the liberty, vowing that the 
dress shall never be finished by any- 
body else but shall be laid bv for a 
keepsake just as it is and called Little 
Dorrit though why that strangest of de- 
nominations at any time I never did 
myself and now I never shall ! ” 

Thus Flora, in taking leave of her 
favorite. Little Dorrit thanked her, 
and embraced her, over and over again ; 
and finally came out of the house with 
Clennam, and took coach for the Mar- 
shalsea. 

It was a strangely unreal ride through 
the old squalid streets, with a sensation 
of being raised out of them, into an 
airy world of wealth and grandeur. 
When Arthur told her that she would 
soon ride in her own carriage through 
very different scenes, w'hen all the fa- 
miliar experiences would have vanished 
away, she looked frightened. But 
when he substituted her father for her- 
self, and told her how he would ride in 
his carriage, and how great and grand 
he would be, her tears of joy and inno- 
cent pride fell fast. Seeing that the 
happiness her mind could realize was 
all shining upon him, Arthur kept that 
single figure before her; and so they 
rode brightly through the poor streets 
in the prison neighborhood, to carry him 
the great news. 

When Mr. Chivery, w'ho was on duty, 
admitted them into the lodge, he saw' 
something in their faces which filled 
him w'ith astonishment. He stood 
looking after them, when they hurried 
into the prison, as though he perceived 
that they had come back accompanied 
by a ghost apiece. Two or three col- 
legians w'hom they passed looked after 
them too, and presently joining Mr. 
Chivery, formed a little group on the 
lodge steps, in the midst of which 
there spontaneously originated a whis- 
per that the Father w'as going to get his 
discharge. Within a few' minutes it 
was heard in the remotest room in the 
college. 

Little Dorrit opened the door from 
w-ithout, and they both entered. He 


242 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


was sitting in his old gray gown, and 
his old black cap, in the sunlight 
by the window, reading his news- 
paper. His glasses were in his hand, 
and he had just looked round ; surprised 
at first, no doubt, by her step upon the 
stairs, not expecting her until night ; 
surprised again, by seeing Arthur Clen- 
nam in her company. As they came in, 
the same unwonted look in both of them, 
which had already caught attention in 
the yard below, struck him. He did 
not rise or speak, but laid down his 
glasses and his newspaper on the table 
beside him, and looked at them with 
his mouth a little open, and his lips 
trembling. When Arthur put out his 
hand, he touched it, but not with his 
usual state ; and then he turned to his 
daughter, who had sat down close be- 
side him with her hands upon his shoul- 
der, and looked attentively in her face. 

“ Father ! I have been made so hap- 
py this morning ! ” 

■“You have been made so happy, my 
dear? ” 

“ By Mr. Clennam, father. He 
brought me such joyful and wonderful 
intelligence about you ! If he had not, 
with his great kindness and gentleness, 
prepared me for it, father, — prepared 
me for it, father, — I think I could not 
have borne it.” 

Her agitation was exceedingly great, 
and the tears rolled down her face. He 
put his hand suddenly to his heart, and 
looked at Clennam. 

“ Compose yourself, sir,” said Clen- 
nam, and take a little time to think. 
To think of the brightest and most for- 
tunate accidents of life. We have all 
heard of great surprises of joy. They 
are not at an end, sir. They are rare, 
but not at an end.” 

“Mr. Clennam? Not at an end? 
Not at an end for — ” He touched him- 
self upon the breast, instead of saying 
“ me.” 

“ No,” returned Clennam. 

“What surprise,” he asked, keeping 
his left hand over his heart, and there 
stopping in his speech, while with his 
right hand he put his glasses exactly 
level on the table, — “ what such surprise 
can be in store for me ? ” 

“ Let me answer with another ques- 


tion. Tell me, Mr. Dorrit, what sur- 
prise would be the most unlooked for 
and the most acceptable to you. Do 
not be afraid to imagine it, or to say 
what it would be.” 

He looked steadfastly at Clennam, 
and, so looking at him, seemed to 
change into a very old haggard man. 
The sun was bright upon the wall be- 
yond the window, and on the spikes 
at top. He slowly stretched out the 
hand that had been upon his heart, and 
pointed at the wall. 

“ It is down,” said Clennam. 
“Gone!” 

He remained in the same attitude, 
looking steadfastly at him. 

“And in its place,” said Clennam, 
slowly and distinctly, “ are the means 
to possess and enjoy the utmost that 
they have so long shut out. Mr. Dor- 
rit, there is not the smallest doubt that 
within a few days you will be free, and 
highly prosperous. I congratulate you 
with all my soul on this change of for- 
tune, and on the happy future into 
which you are soon to carry the treas- 
ure you have been blest with here, — the 
best of all the riches you can have else- 
where, — the treasure at your side.” 

With those words, he pressed his 
hand and released it ; and his daughter, 
laying her face against his, encircled 
him in the hour of his prosperity with 
her arms, as she had in the long years 
of his adversity encircled him with her 
love and toil and truth ; and poured out 
her full heart in gratitude, hope, joy, 
blissful ecstasy, and all for him. 

“ I shall see him as I never saw him 
yet. I shall see my dear love, with the 
dark cloud cleared away. I shall see 
him, as my poor mother saw him long 
ago. O my dear, my dear ! O father, 
father ! O thank God, thank God ! ” 

He yielded himself to her kisses and 
caresses, but did not return them, except 
that he put an arm about her. Neither 
did he say one word. His steadfast 
look was now divided between her 
and Clennam, and he began to shake as 
if he were very cold. Explaining to 
Little Dorrit that he would run to the 
coffee-house for a bottle of wine, Ar- 
thur fetched it with all the haste he 
could use. While it was being brought 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


243 


from the cellar to the bar, a number of 
excited people asked him what had 
happened ; when he hurriedly informed 
them, that Mr. Dorrit had succeeded to 
a fortune. 

On coming back with the wine in his 
hand, he found that she had placed her 
father in his easy-chair, and had loosened 
his shirt and neckcloth. They filled a 
tumbler with wine, and held it to his 
lips. When he had swallowed a little, 
he took the glass himself and emptied 
it. Soon after that, he leaned back in 
his chair and cried, with his handker- 
chief before his face. 

After this had lasted awhile, Clen- 
nam thought it a good season for divert- 
ing his attention from the main sur- 
prise, by relating its details. Slowly, 
therefore, and in a quiet tone of voice, 
he explained them as he best could, and 
enlarged on the nature of Pancks’s ser- 
vice. 

“ He shall be — ha — he shall be 
handsomely recompensed, sir,” said 
the Father, starting up and moving hur- 
riedly about the room. “ Assure your- 
self, Mr. Clennam, that everybody con- 
cerned shall be — ha — shall be nobly 
rewarded. No one, my dear sir, shall 
say that he has an unsatisfied claim 
against me. I shall repay the — hum — 
the advances I have had from you, sir, 
with peculiar pleasure. I beg to be in- 
formed at your early convenience, what 
advances you have made my son.” 

He had no purpose in going about 
the room, but he was not still a mo- 
ment. 

“Everybody,” he said, “shall be re- 
membered. I will not go away from 
here in anybody’s debt. All the people 
who have been — ha — well behaved to- 
wards myself and my family, shall be 
rewarded. Chivery shall be rewarded. 
Young John shall be rewarded. I par- 
ticularly wish, and intend, to act munifi- 
cently, Mr. Clennam.” 

“ Will you allow me,” said Arthur, 
laying his purse on the table, to supply 
any present contingencies, Mr. Dorrit ? 

I thought it best to bring a sum of mon- 
ey for the purpose.” 

“ Thank you, sir, thank you. I ac- 
cept with readiness, at the present mo- 
ment, what I could not an hour ago 


have conscientiously taken. I am 
obliged to you for the temporary accom- 
modation. Exceedingly temporary, but 
well timed, — well timed.” His hand 
had closed upon the money, and he 
carried it about with him. “ Be so 
kind, sir, as to add the amount to those 
former advances to which I have al- 
ready referred ; being careful, if you 
please, not to omit advances made to 
my son. A mere verbal statement of 
the gross amount is all I shall — ha — 
all I shall require.” 

His eye fell upon his daughter at this 
point, and he stopped for a moment to 
kiss her, and to pat her head. 

“ It will be necessary to find a milli- 
ner, my love, and to make a speedy and 
complete change in your very plain 
dress. Something must be done with 
Maggy too, who at present is — ha — 
barely respectable, barely respectable. 
And your sister, Amy, and your brother. 
And my brother, your uncle, — poor 
soul, I trust this will rouse him, — mes- 
sengers must be despatched to fetch 
them. They must be informed of this. 
We must break it to them cautiously, 
but they must be informed directly. 
We owe it as a duty to them, and to 
ourselves, from this moment, not to let 
them — hum — not to let them do any- ' 
thing.” 

This was the first intimation he had 
ever given, that he was privy to the 
fact that they did something for a live- 
lihood. 

He was still jogging about the room, 
with the purse clutched in his hand, 
when a great cheering arose in the yard. 
“The news has spread already,” said 
Clennam, looking down from the win- 
dow. “ Will you show' yourself to 
them, Mr. Dorrit? They are very 
earnest, and they evidently wish it.” 

“I — hum — ha — I confess I could 
have desired, Amy my dear,” he said, 
jogging about in a more feverish flutter 
than before, “ to have made some 
change in my dress first, and to have 
bought a — hum — a watch and chain. 
But if it must be done as it is, it — ha — 
it must be done. Fasten the collar of 
my shirt, my dear. Mr. Clennam, w'ould 
you oblige me — hum — with a blue 
neckcloth you will find in that draw'er at 


244 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


your elbow. Button my coat across at 
the chest, my love. It looks — ha — it 
looks broader buttoned.” 

With his trembling hand he pushed 
his gray h*ir up, and then, taking Clen- 
nam and his daughter for supporters, 
appeared at the window leaning on an 
arm of each. The collegians cheered 
him very heartily, and he kissed his 
hand to them with great urbanity and 
protection. When he withdrew into 
the room again, he said, “ Poor crea- 
tures ! ” in a tone of much pity for their 
miserable condition. 

Little Dorrit was deeply anxious that 
he should lie down to compose himself. 
On Arthur’s speaking to her of his 
going to inform Pancks that he might 
now appear as soon as he would, and 
pursue the joyful business to its close, 
she entreated him in a whisper to stay 
with her until her father should be quite 
calm and at rest. He needed no second 
entreaty ; and she prepared her father’s 
bed, and begged him to lie down. For 
another half-hour or more he would be 
persuaded to do nothing but go about the 
room, discussing with himself the prob- 
abilities for and against the Marshal’s 
allowing the whole of the prisoners to 
go to the windows of the official resi- 
dence which commanded the street, to 
see himself and family depart forever 
in a carriage, — which, he said, he 
thought would be a Sight for them. 
But, gradually, he began to droop and 
tire, and at last stretched himself upon 
the bed. 

She took her faithful place beside 
him, fanning him and cooling his fore- 
head ; and he seemed to be falling 
asleep (always with the money in his 
hand), when he unexpectedly sat up and 
said, — 

“ Mr. Clennam, I beg your pardon. 
Am I to understand, my dear sir, that I 
could — ha — could pass through the 
lodge at this moment, and — hum — 
take a walk ? ” 

“ I think not, Mr. Dorrit,” was the 
unwilling reply. “ There are certain 
forms to be completed ; and although 
your detention here is now in itself a 
form, I fear it is one that for a little 
longer has to be observed too.” 

At this he shed tears again. 


“ It is but a few hours, sir,” Clennam 
cheerfully urged upon him. 

‘‘A few hours, sir,” he returned in a 
sudden passion. “You talk very easily 
of hours, sir ! How long do you sup- 
pose, sir, that an hour is to a man who 
is choking for want of air?” 

It was his last demonstration for that 
time ; as, after shedding some more 
tears and querulously complaining that 
he couldn’t breathe, he slowly fell into 
a slumber. Clennam had abundant 
occupation for his thoughts, as he sat 
in the quiet room watching the father 
on his bed, and the daughter fanning 
his face. 

Little Dorrit had been thinking too. 
After softly putting his gray hair aside, 
and touching his forehead with her lips, 
she looked towards Arthur, who came 
nearer to her, and pursued in a low 
whisper the subject of her thoughts. 

“ Mr. Clennam, will he pay all his 
debts before he leaves here ? ” 

“No doubt. All.” 

“ All the debts for which he has been 
imprisoned here, all my life and long- 
er? ” 

“ No doubt.” 

There was something of uncertainty 
and remonstrance in her look ; some- 
thing that was not all satisfaction. He 
wondered to detect it, and said, — 

“You are glad that he should do 
so ? ” 

“Are you?” asked Little Dorrit, 
wistfully. 

“ Am I ? Most heartily glad ! ” 

“ Then I know I ought to be.” 

“ And are you not? ” 

“It seems to me hard,” said Little 
Dorrit, “ that he should have lost so 
many years and suffered so much, and 
at last pay all the debts as well. It 
seems to me hard that he should pay in 
life and money both.” 

“My dear child — ” Clennam was 
beginning. 

“ Yes, I know I am wrong,” she 
pleaded timidly, “ don’t think any worse 
of me ; it has grown up with me here.” 

The prison, which could spoil so 
many things, had tainted Little Dorrit’s 
mind no more than this. Engendered 
as the confusion was, in compassion for 
the poor prisoner, her father, it was the 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


245 


first speck Clennam had ever seen, it 
was the last speck Clennam ever saw, 
of the prison atmosphere upon her. 

He thought this and forebore to say 
another word. With the thought, her 
purity and goodness came before him in 
their brightest light. The little spot 
made them the more beautiful. 

Worn out with her own emotions, 
and yielding to the silence of the room, 
her hand slowly slackened and failed in 
its fanning movement, and her head 
dropped down on the pillow at her 
father’s side. Clennam rose softly, 
opened and closed the door without a 
sound, and passed from the prison, 
carrying the quiet with him into the 
turbulent streets. 


CHAPTER XXXVI. 

THE MARSHALSEA BECOMES AN OR- 
PHAN. 

And now the day arrived when Mr. 
Dorrit and his family were to leave the 
prison forever, and the stones of its 
much-trodden pavement were to know 
them no more. 

The interval had been short, but he 
had greatly complained of its length, 
and had been imperious with Mr. Rugg 
touching the delay. He had been high 
with Mr. Rugg, and had threatened to 
employ some one else. He had re- 
quested Mr. Rugg not to presume upon 
the place in which he found him, but 
to do his duty, sir, and to do it with 
promptitude. He had told Mr. Rugg 
that he knew what lawyers and agents 
were, and that he would not submit to 
imposition. On that gentleman’shum- 
bly representing that he exerted himself 
to the utmost, Miss Fanny was very 
short with him ; desiring to know what 
less he could do, when he had been 
told a dozen times that money was no 
object, and expressing her suspicion 
that he forgot whom he talked to. 

Towards the Marshal, who was a 
Marshal of many years’ standing, and 
with whom he had never had any pre- 
vious difference, Mr. Dorrit comported 
himself with severity. That officer, on 


personally tendering his congratulations, 
offered the free use of two rooms in his 
house for Mr. Dorrit’s occupation un- 
til his departure. Mr. Dorrit thanked 
him at the moment, and replied that 
he would think of it ; but the Marshal 
was no sooner gone than he sat down 
and wrote him a cutting note, in which 
he remarked that he had never on any 
former occasion had the honor of re- 
ceiving his congratulations, (which was 
true, though indeed there had not been 
anything particular to congratulate him 
upon,) and that he begged, on behalf 
of himself and family, to repudiate the 
Marshal’s offer, with all those thanks 
which its disinterested character and 
its perfect independence of all worldly 
considerations demanded. 

Although his brother showed so dim 
a glimmering of interest in their altered 
fortunes, that it was very doubtful 
whether he understood them, Mr. 
Dorrit caused him to be measured for 
new raiment by the hosiers, tailors, 
hatters, and bootmakers whom he 
called in for himself ; and ordered that 
his old clothes should be taken from 
him and burned. Miss Fanny and Mr. 
Tip required no direction in making an 
appearance of great fashion and ele- 
gance ; and the three passed this inter- 
val together at the best hotel in the 
neighborhood, — though truly, as Miss 
Fanny said, the best was very indiffer- 
ent. In connection with that establish- 
ment, Mr. Tip hired a cabriolet, horse, 
and groom, a very neat turn-out, which 
was usually to be observed for two or 
three hours at a time, gracing the 
Borough High Street, outside the 
Marshal sea courtyard. A modest lit- 
tle hired chariot and pair was also fre- 
quently to be seen there ; in alighting 
from and entering which vehicle, Miss 
Fanny fluttered the Marshal’s daugh- 
ters by the display of inaccessible bon- 
nets. 

A great deal of business was trans- 
acted in this short period. Among 
other items, Messrs. Peddle and Pool, 
solicitors, of Monument Yard, were 
instructed by their client Edward Dor- 
rit, Esquire, to address a letter to Mr. 
Arthur Clennam, enclosing the sum of 
twenty-four pounds nine shillings and 


246 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


eightpence, being the amount of princi- 
pal and interest computed at the rate 
of five per cent per annum, in which 
their client believed himself to be in- 
debted to Mr. Clennam. In making 
this communication and remittance, 
Messrs. Peddle and Pool were further 
instructed by their client to remind Mr. 
Clennam, that the favor of the advance 
now repaid (including gate-fees) had 
not been asked of him, and to inform 
him that it would not have been ac- 
cepted if it had been openly proffered 
in his name. With which they re- 
quested a stamped receipt, and re- 
mained his obedient servants. A great 
deal of business had likewise to be 
done, within the so-soon-to-be-or- 
phaned Marshalsea, by Mr. Dorrit so 
long its Father, chiefly arising out of 
applications made to him by collegians 
for small sums of money. To these 
he responded with the greatest liberali- 
ty, and with no lack of formality ; al- 
ways first writing to appoint a time at 
which the applicant might wait upon 
him in his room, and then receiving 
him in the midst of a vast accumula- 
tion of documents, and accompanying 
his donation (for he said in every such 
case, “ It is a donation, not a loan ”) 
with a great deal of good counsel : to 
the effect, that he, the expiring Father 
of the Marshalsea, hoped to be long 
remembered as an example that a 
man might preserve his own and the 
general respect even there. 

The collegians were not envious. Be- 
sides that they had a personal and tra- 
ditional regard for a collegian of so 
many years’ standing, the event was 
creditable to the college, and made it 
famous in the newspapers. Perhaps 
more of them thought, too, than were 
quite aware of it. that the thing might 
in the lottery of chances have happened 
to themselves, or that something of the 
sort might yet happen to themselves, 
some day or other. They took it very 
well. A few were low at the thought 
of being left behind, and being left poor ; 
but even these did not grudge the family 
their brilliant reverse. There might 
have been much more envy in politer 
places. It seems probable that medi- 
ocrity of fortune would have been dis- 


posed to be less magnanimous than the 
collegians, who lived from hand to 
mouth, — from the pawnbroker’s hand 
to the day’s dinner. 

They got up an address to him, which 
they presented in a neat frame and glass 
(though it was not afterwards displayed 
in the family mansion or preserved 
among the family papers) ; and to which 
he returned a gracious answer. In that 
document he assured them, in a Royal 
manner, that he received the profession 
of their attachment w'ith a full convic- 
tion of its sincerity ; and again generally 
exhorted them to follow his example, — 
which, at least in so far as coming into 
a great property was concerned, there 
is no doubt they would have gladly 
imitated. He took the same occasion 
of inviting them to a comprehensive 
entertainment, to be given to the whole 
college in the yard, and at which he 
signified he would have the honor of 
taking a parting glass to the health and 
happiness of all those whom he was 
about to leave behind. 

He did not in person dine at this 
public repast (it took place at two in 
the afternoon, and his dinners now came 
in from the hotel at six), but his son 
was so good as to take the head of the 
principal table, and to be very free and 
engaging. He himself went about 
among the company, and took notice of 
individuals, and saw that the viands 
w'ere of the quality he had ordered, and 
that all were served. On the whole, 
he was like a baron of the olden time, 
in a rare good-humor. At the conclu- 
sion of the repast, he pledged his guests 
in a bumper of old Maderia ; and told 
them that he hoped they had enjoyed 
themselves, and, what was more, that 
they would enjoy themselves for the 
rest of the evening ; that he wished 
them well ; and that he bade them 
welcome. His health being drunk with 
acclamations, he was not so baronial 
after all but that in trying to return 
thanks he broke down, in the manner 
of a mere serf with a heart in his breast, 
and wept before them all. After this 
great success, which he supposed to be 
a failure, he gave them, “ Mr. Chivery 
and his brother officers ” ; whom he 
had beforehand presented with ten 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


247 


pounds each, and who were all in at- 
tendance. Mr. Chivery spoke to the 
toast, saying, “ What you undertake to 
lock up, lock up ; but remember that 
you are, in the words of the fettered Af- 
rican, a man and a brother ever.” The 
list of toasts disposed of, Mr. Dorrit 
urbanely went through the motions of 
playing a game at skittles with the 
collegian who was the next oldest in- 
habitant to himself ; and left the ten- 
antry to their diversions. 

But all these occurrences preceded 
the final day. And now the day arrived 
when he and his family were to leave 
the prison forever, and when the stones 
of its much- trodden pavement were to 
know them no more. 

Noon was the hour appointed for the 
departure. As it approached, there 
was not a collegian within doors, nor a 
turnkey absent. The latter class of 
gentlemen appeared in their Sunday 
clothes, and the greater part of the col- 
legians were brightened up as much as 
circumstances allowed. Two or three 
flags were even displayed, and the chil- 
dren put on odds and ends of ribbon. 
Mr. Dorrit himself, at this trying time, 
preserved a serious but graceful dignity. 
M uch of his attention was given to his 
brother, as to whose bearing on the 
great occasion he felt anxious. 

“My dear Frederick,” said he, “if 
you will give me your arm, we will pass 
among our friends together. I think it 
is right that we should go out arm in 
arm, my dear Frederick.” 

“ Hah ! ” said Frederick. “ Yes, yes, 
yes, yes.” 

“ And if, my dear Frederick, — if you 
could, without putting any great con- 
straint upon yourself, throw a little 
(pray excuse me, Frederick), a little 
polish into your usual demeanor — ” 

“ William, William,” said the other, 
shaking his head, “ it ’s for you to do 
all that. I don’t know how. All for- 
gotten, forgotten ! ” 

“ But, my dear fellow,” returned 
William, “for that very reason, if for 
no other, you must positively try to 
rouse yourself. What you have forgot- 
ten you must now begin to recall, my 
dear F rederick. Your position — ’ ’ 
“Eh?” said Frederick. 


“Your position, my dear Frederick.” 

“Mine?” He looked first at his 
own figure, and then at his brother’s, 
and then, drawing a long breath, cried, 
“ Hah, to be sure ! Yes, yes, yes.” 

“Your position, my dear Frederick, 
is now a fine one. Your position as my 
brother is a very fine one. And I know 
that it belongs to your conscientious na- 
ture to try to become worthy of it, my 
dear Frederick, and to try to adorn it. 
To be no discredit to it, but to adorn 
it.” 

“ William,” said the other, weakly 
and with a sigh, “ I will do anything you 
wish, my brother, provided it lies in my 
power. Pray be so kind as to recollect 
what a limited power mine is. What 
would you wish me to do to-day, broth- 
er? Say what it is, only say what it 
is.” 

“ My dearest Frederick, nothing. It 
is not worth troubling so good a heart 
as yours with.” 

“ Pray trouble it,” returned the oth- 
er. “It finds it no trouble, William, to 
do anything it can for you.” 

William passed his hand across his 
eyes, and murmured, with august satis- 
faction, “ Blessings on your attachment, 
my poor dear fellow ! ” Then he said 
aloud, “ Well, my dear Frederick, if 
you will only try, as we walk out, to 
show that you are alive to the occasion, 
— that you think about it — ” 

“ What would you advise me to think 
about it ? ” returned his submissive 
brother. 

“O my dear Frederick, how can I 
answer you ? I can only say what, in 
leaving these good people, I think my- 
self.” 


“That’s it!” cried his brother. 
“ That will help me.” 

“ I find that I think, my dear Fred- 
erick, and with mixed emotions in 
which a softened compassion predomi- 
nates, What will they do without 
me ! ” 


“ True,” returned his brother. “ Yes, 
yes, yes, yes. I ’ll think that as we go. 
What will they do without my brother ! 
Poor things ! What wilUthey do with- 
out him ! ” 

Twelve o’clock having just struck, 
and the carriage being reported ready in 


248 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


the outer court-yard, the brothers pro- 
ceeded down stairs arm in arm. Ed- 
ward Dorrit, Esquire (once Tip), and 
his sister Fanny followed, also arm in 
arm ; Mr. Plornish and Maggy, to 
whom had been intrusted the removal 
of such of the family effects as were con- 
sidered worth removing, followed, bear- 
ing bundles and burdens to be packed 
in a cart. 

In the yard were the collegians and 
turnkeys. In the yard were Mr. 
Pancks and Mr. Rugg, come to see the 
last touch given to their work. In the 
yard was Young John making a new 
epitaph for himself on the occasion of 
his dying of a broken heart. In the 
yard was the Patriarchal Casby looking 
so tremendously benevolent that many 
enthusiastic collegians grasped him fer- 
vently by the hand, and the wives and 
female relatives of many more colle- 
gians kissed his hand, nothing doubt- 
ing that he had done it all. In the 
yard was the usual chorus of people 
proper to such a place. In the yard 
was the man with the shadowy grievance 
respecting the fund which the Marshal 
embezzled, who had got up at five in 
the morning to complete the copying 
of a perfectly unintelligible history of 
that transaction, which he had com- 
mitted to Mr. Dorrit’s care as a docu- 
ment of the last importance, calculat- 
ed to stun the government and effect 
the Marshal’s downfall. In the yard 
was the insolvent whose utmost ener- 
gies were always set on getting into 
debt, who broke into prison with as 
much pains as other men have broken 
out of it, and who was always being 
cleared and complimented ; while the 
insolvent at his elbow — a mere lit- 
tle, snivelling, striving tradesman, half 
dead of anxious efforts to keep out of 
debt — found it a hard matter, indeed, 
to get a Commissioner to release him 
with much reproof and reproach. In the 
yard was the man of many children and 
many burdens, whose failure astonished 
everybody ; in the yard was the man of 
no children and large resources, whose 
failure astonished nobody. There were 
the people who were always going out 
to-morrow, and always putting it off; 
there were the people who had come in » 


yesterday, and who were much more 
jealous and resentful of this freak of for- 
tune than the seasoned birds. There 
were some who, in pure meanness of 
spirit, cringed and bowed before the en- 
riched collegian and his family ; there 
were others who did so really because 
their eyes, accustomed to the gloom of 
their imprisonment and poverty, could 
not support the light of such bright sun- 
shine. There were many whose shil- 
lings had gone into his pocket to buy 
him meat and drink ; but none who 
were now obtrusively Hail fellow well 
met ! with him on the strength of that 
assistance. It was rather to be re- 
marked of the caged birds, that they 
were a little shy of the bird about to be 
so grandly free, and that they had a ten- 
dency to withdraw themselves towards 
the bars, and seem a little fluttered as 
he passed. 

Through these spectators the little 
procession, headed by the two brothers, 
moved slowly to the gate. Mr. Dorrit, 
yielding to the vast speculation how the 
poor creatures were to get on without 
him, was great and sad, but not ab- 
sorbed. He patted children on the 
head like Sir Roger de Coverley going 
to church, he spoke to people in the 
background by their Christian names, 
he condescended to all present, and 
seemed, for their consolation, to walk 
encircled by the legend in golden char- 
acters, “ Be comforted, my people ! 
Bear it!” 

At last three honest cheers announced 
that he had passed the gate, and that 
the Marshalsea was an orphan. Be- 
fore they had ceased to ring in the 
echoes of the prison walls, the family 
had got into their carriage, and the at- 
tendant had the steps in his hand. 

Then, and not before, “Good gra- 
cious ! ” cried Miss Fanny, all at once, 

“ Where ’s Amy ! ” 

Her father had thought she was with 
her sister. Her sister had thought she 
was “ somewhere or other.” They had 
all trusted to finding her, as they had 
always done, quietly in the right place 
at the right moment. This going away 
was perhaps the very first action of 
their joint lives that they had got 
through without her. 


LITTLE DORR IT. 


249 


A minute might have been consumed I 
in the ascertaining of these points, 
when Miss Fanny, who, from her seat 
in the carriage, commanded the long 
narrow passage leading to the lodge, 
flushed indignantly. 

“ Now I do say, pa,” cried she, 

“ that this is disgraceful ! ” 

“ What is disgraceful, Fanny?” 

“ I do say,” she repeated, “ this is 
perfectly infamous ! Really almost 
enough, even at such a time as this, to 
make one wish one was dead !. Here is 
that child Amy, in her ugly old shabby 
dress, which she was so obstinate 
about, pa, which I over and over again 
begged and prayed her to change, and 
which she over and over again objected 
to, and promised to change to-day, 
saying she wished to wear it as long as 
ever she remained in there with you, — 
which was absolutely romantic nonsense 
of the lowest kind, — here is that child 
Amy disgracing us, to the last moment 
and at the last moment, by being car- 
ried out in that dress after all. And by 
that Mr.Clennam too ! ” 

The offence was proved, as she deliv- 


ered the indictment. Clennam ap- 
peared at the carriage door, bearing 
the little insensible figure in his arms. 

“ She has been forgotten,” he said, 
in a tone of pity not free from reproach. 
“ I ran up to her room (which Mr. 
Chivery showed me), and found the 
door open, and that she had fainted on 
the floor, dear child. She appeared to 
have gone to change her dress, and to 
have sunk down overpowered. It may 
have been the cheering, or it may have 
happened sooner. Take care of this 
poor cold hand, Miss Dorrit. Don’t 
let it fall.” 

“Thank j’ou, sir,” returned Miss 
Dorrit, bursting into tears. “ 1 believe 
I know what to do, if you ’ll give me 
leave. Dear Amy, open your eyes, 
that ’s a love ! O Amy, Amy, I really 
am so vexed and ashamed ! Do rouse 
yourself, darling ! O, why are they 
not driving on ! Pray, pa, do drive 
on ! ” 

The attendant, getting between Clen- 
nam and the carriage door, with a sharp, 
“ By your leave, sir ! ” bundled up the 
steps, and they drove away. 


BOOK II 


RICHES. 


CHAPTER I. 

FELLOW-TRAVELLERS. 

In the autumn of the year, Darkness 
and Night were creeping up to the high- 
est ridges of the Alps. 

It was vintage time in the valleys on 
the Swiss side of the Pass of the Great 
Saint Bernard, and along the banks of 
the Lake of Geneva. The air there 
was charged with the scent of gathered 
grapes. Baskets, troughs, and tubs of 
grapes stood in the dim village door- 
ways, stopped the steep and narrow vil- 
lage streets, and had been carrying all 
day along the roads and lanes. Grapes, 
spilt and crushed under foot, lay about 
everywhere. The child carried in a 
sling by the laden peasant-woman toil- 
ing home was quieted with picked-up 
grapes ; the idiot sunning his big goitre 
under the eaves of the wooden chalet 
by the way to the waterfall sat munch- 
ing grapes ; the breath of the cows and 
goats was redolent of leaves and stalks 
of grapes; the company in every little 
cabaret were eating, drinking, talking 
grapes. A pity that no ripe touch of 
this generous abundance could be given 
to the thin, hard, stony wine w'hich 
after all was made from the grapes ! 

The air had been warm and transpar- 
ent through the whole of the bright day. 
Shining metal spires and church roofs, 
distant and rarely seen, had sparkled in 
the view ; and the snowy mountain-tops 
had been so clear that unaccustomed 
eyes, cancelling the intervening coun- 
try, and slighting their rugged height 
for something fabulous, would have 
measured them as within a few hours’ 
easy reach. Mountain-peaks of great 
celebrity in the valleys, whence no 
trace of their existence was visible 


sometimes for months together, had 
been since morning plain and near in 
the blue sky. And now, when it was 
dark below, though they seemed sol- 
emnly to recede, like spectres who were 
going to vanish, as the red dye of the 
sunset faded out of them and left them 
coldly white, they were yet distinctly 
defined, in their loneliness, above the 
mists and shadows. 

Seen from those solitudes, and from 
the Pass of the Great Saint Bernard, 
which was one of them, the ascending 
Night came up the mountain like a 
rising water. When it at last rose to 
the walls of the convent of the Great 
Saint Bernard, it was as if that weather- 
beaten structure were another Ark, and 
floated away upon the shadowy waves. 

Darkness, outstripping some visitors 
on mules, had risen thus to the rough 
convent walls, when those travellers 
were yet climbing the mountain. As 
the heat of the glowing day, when they 
had stopped to drink at the streams of 
melted ice and snow, was changed to 
the searching cold of the frosty rarefied 
night air at a great height, so the fresh 
beauty of the lower journey had yielded 
to barrenness and desolation. A craggy 
track, up which the mules in single file 
scrambled and turned from block to 
block, as though they were ascending 
the broken staircase of a gigantic ruin, 
was their way now. No trees were to 
be seen, nor any vegetable growth, 
save a poor brown scrubby moss, freez- 
ing in the chinks of rock. Blackened 
skeleton arms of wood by the wayside 
pointed upward to the convent, as if 
the ghosts of former travellers, over- 
whelmed by the snow, haunted the 
scene of their distress. Icicle-hung 
caves and cellars built for refuges from 
sudden storms, were like so many 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


251 


whispers of the perils of the place ; 
never-resting wreaths and mazes of 
mist wandered about, hunted by a 
moaning wind ; and snow, the besetting 
danger of the mountain, against which 
all its defences were taken, drifted 
sharply down. 

The file of mules, jaded by their day’s 
work, turned and wound slowly up the 
steep ascent ; the foremost led by a 
guide on foot, in his broad-brimmed 
hat and round jacket, carrying a moun- 
tain staff or two upon his shoulder, 
with whom another guide conversed. 
There was no speaking among the 
string of riders. The sharp cold, the 
fatigue of the journey, and a new sensa- 
tion of a catching in the breath, partly 
as if they had just emerged from very 
clear crisp water, and partly as if they 
had been sobbing, kept them silent. 

At length, a light on the summit of 
the rocky staircase gleamed through the 
snow and mist. The guides called to 
the mules, the mules pricked up their 
drooping heads, the travellers’ tongues 
were loosened, and in a sudden burst of 
slipping, climbing, jingling, clinking, 
and talking, they arrived at the convent 
door. 

Other mules had arrived not long be- 
fore, some with peasant-riders and some 
with goods, and had trodden the snow 
about the door into a pool of mud. 
Riding-saddles and bridles, pack-sad- 
dles and strings of bells, mules and 
men, lanterns, torches, sacks, proven- 
der, barrels, cheeses, kegs of honey and 
butter, straw bundles and packages of 
many shapes, were crowded confusedly 
together in this thawed quagmire, and 
about the steps. Up here in the clouds, 
everything was seen through cloud, and 
seemed dissolving into cloud. The 
breath of the men was cloud, the breath 
of the mules was cloud, the lights were 
encircled by cloud, speakers close at 
hand were not seen for cloud, though 
their voices and all other sounds were 
surprisingly clear. Of the cloudy line 
of mules hastily tied to rings in the 
wall, one would bite another, or kick 
another, and then the whole mist 
would be disturbed ; with men diving 
into it, and cries of men and beasts 
coming out of it, and no by-stander dis- 


cerning what was wrong. In the midst 
of this, the great stable of the convent, 
occupying the basement story, and en- 
tered by the basement door, outside 
which all the disorder was, poured forth 
its contribution of cloud, as if the whole 
rugged edifice were filled with nothing 
else, and would collapse as soon as it 
had emptied itself, leaving the snow to 
fall upon the bare mountain summit. 

While all this noise and hurry were 
rife among the living travellers, there, 
too, silently assembled in a grated 
house, half a dozen paces removed, 
with the same cloud enfolding them, 
and the same snow-flakes drifting in 
upon them, were the dead travellers 
found upon the mountain. The mother, 
storm-belated many winters ago, still 
standing in the corner with her baby at 
her breast ; the man who had frozen 
with his arm raised to his mouth in 
fear or hunger, still pressing it with 
his dry lips after years and years. An 
awful company, mysteriously come to- 
gether ! A wild destiny for that mother 
to have foreseen, “ Surrounded by so 
many and such companions upon whom 
I never looked, and never shall look, I 
and my child will dwell together in- 
separable, on the Great Saint Bernard, 
outlasting generations who will come 
to see us, and will never know our 
name, or one word of our story but the 
end.” 

The living travellers thought little or 
nothing of the dead just then. They 
thought much more of alighting at the 
convent door, and warming themselves 
at the convent fire. Disengaged from 
the turmoil, which was already calming 
down as the crowd of mules began to 
be bestowed in the stable, they hur- 
ried shivering up the steps and into 
the building. There was a smell within, 
coming up from the floor of tethered 
beasts, like the smell of a menagerie 
of wild animals. There were strong 
arched galleries within, huge stone 
piers, great staircases, and thick walls 
pierced with small sunken windows, — 
fortifications against the mountain 
storms, as if they had been human 
enemies. There were gloomy vaulted 
sleeping-rooms within, intensely cold, 
but clean and hospitably prepared for 


252 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


guests. Finally, there was a parlor for 
guests to sit in and to sup in, where 
a table was already laid, and where a 
blazing fire shone red and high. 

In this room, after having had their 
quarters for the night allotted to them 
by two young Fathers, the travellers 
presently drew round the hearth. They 
were in three parties ; of whom the 
first, as the most numerous and im- 
portant, was the slowest, and had been 
overtaken by one of the others on the 
way up. It consisted of an elderly lady, 
two gray-haired gentlemen, two young 
ladies, and their brother. These were 
attended (not to mention four guides) 
by a courier, two footmen, and two 
waiting-maids; which strong body of 
inconvenience was accommodated else- 
where under the same roof. The party 
that had overtaken them, and followed 
in their train, consisted of only three 
members : one lady and two gentlemen. 
The third party, which had ascended 
from the valley on the Italian side of 
the Pass, and had arrived first, were 
four in number : a plethoric, hungry, 
and silent German tutor in spectacles, 
on a tour with three young men, his 
pupils, all plethoric, hungry, and silent, 
and all in spectacles. 

These three groups sat round the fire 
eying each other dryly, and waiting for 
supper. Only one among them, one of 
the gentlemen belonging to the party of 
three, made advances towards conversa- 
tion. Throwing out his lines for the 
Chief of the important tribe, while ad- 
dressing himself to his own companions, 
he remarked, in a tone of voice which 
included all the company if they chose 
to be included, that it had been a long 
day, and that he felt for the ladies. 
That he feared one of the young la- 
dies was not a strong or accustomed 
traveller, and had been over-fatigued 
two or three hours ago. That he had 
observed, from his station in the rear, 
that she sat her mule as if she were 
exhausted. That he had, twice or 
thrice afterwards, done himself the 
honor of inquiring of one of the guides, 
when he fell behind, how the young 
lady did. That he had been enchant- 
ed to learn that she had recovered her 
spirits, and that it had been but a pass- 


ing discomfort. That he trusted (by 
this time he had secured the eyes of 
the Chief, and addressed him) he 
might be permitted to express his 
hope that she was now none the 
worse, and that she would not regret 
having made the journey. 

“ My daughter, I am obliged to you, 
sir,” returned the Chief, “ is quite re- 
stored, and has been greatly interest- 
ed.” 

“ New to mountains, perhaps?” said 
the insinuating traveller. 

“ New to — ha — to mountains,” said 
the Chief. 

“ But you are familiar with them, 
sir? ” the insinuating traveller assumed. 

“ I am — hum — tolerably familiar. 
Not of late years. Not of late years*” 
replied the Chief, with a flourish of 
his hand. 

The insinuating traveller, acknowl- 
edging the flourish with an inclination 
of his head, passed from the Chief to 
the second young lady, who had not 
yet been referred to, otherwise than as 
one of the ladies in whose behalf he 
felt so sensitive an interest. 

He hoped she was not incommoded 
by the fatigues of the day. 

“Incommoded, certainly,” returned 
the young lady, “but not tired.” 

The insinuating traveller compliment- 
ed her on the justice of the distinction. 
It was what he had meant to say. Ev- 
ery lady must doubtless be incommod- 
ed by having to do with that prover- 
bially unaccommodating animal, the 
mule. 

“ We have had, of course,” said the 
young lady, who was rather reserved 
and haughty, “to leave the carriages 
and fourgon at Martigny. And the im- 
possibility of bringing anything that one 
wants to this inaccessible place, and the 
necessity of leaving every comfort be- 
hind, is not convenient.” 

“A savage place, indeed,” said the 
insinuating traveller. 

The elderly lady, who was a model of 
accurate dressing, and whose manner 
was perfect, considered as a piece of 
machinery, here interposed a remark in 
a low soft voice. 

“ But, like other inconvenient places,” 
she observed, “it must be seen. As a 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


253 


place much spoken of, it is necessary to 
see it.” 

“ O, I have not the least objection to 
seeing it, I assure you, Mrs. General,” 
returned the other, carelessly. 

“ You, madam,” said the insinuating 
traveller, “have visited this spot be- 
fore?” 

“ Yes,” returned Mrs. General. “ I 
have been here before. Let me recom- 
mend you, my dear,” to the former 
young lady, “ to shade your face from 
the hot wood, after exposure to the 
mountain air and snow. You too, my 
dear,” to the other and younger lady, 
who immediately did so; while the 
former merely said, “ Thank you, Mrs. 
General, I am perfectly comfortable, 
and prefer remaining as I am.” 

The brother, who had left his chair to 
open a piano that stood in the room, 
and who had whistled into it and shut 
it up again, now came strolling back to 
the fire with his glass in his eye. He 
was dressed in the very fullest and 
completest travelling trim. The world 
seemed hardly large enough to yield 
him an amount of travel proportionate 
to his equipment. 

“ These fellows are an immense time 
with supper,” he drawled. “ I wonder 
what they ’ll give us ! Has anybody 
any idea ? ” 

“Not roast man, I believe,” replied 
the voice of the second gentleman of 
the party of three. 

“ I suppose not. What d’ ye mean ? ” 
he inquired. 

“ That, as you are not to be served 
for the general supper, perhaps you 
will do us the favor of not cooking 
yourself at the general fire,” returned 
the other. 

The young gentleman, who was stand- 
ing in an easy attitude on the hearth, 
cocking his glass at the company, with 
his back to the blaze and his coat 
tucked under his arms, something as if 
he were of the poultry species and 
were trussed for roasting, lost counte- 
nance at this reply ; he seemed about 
to demand further explanation, when 
it was discovered — through all eyes 
turning on the speaker — that the lady 
with him, who was young and beauti- 
ful, had not heard what had passed, 


through having fainted with her head 
upon his shoulder. 

“ I think,” said the gentleman, in a 
subdued tone, “ I had best carry her 
straight to her room. Will you call to 
some one to bring a light ? ” addressing 
his companion, “ and to show the way ? 
In this strange, rambling place 1 don’t 
know that I could find it.” 

“ Pray let me call my maid,” cried 
the taller of the young ladies. 

“ Pray let me put this water to her 
lips,” said the shorter, who had not 
spoken yet. 

Each doing what she suggested, there 
was no want of assistance. Indeed, 
when the two maids came in (escorted 
by the courier, lest any one should strike 
them dumb by addressing a foreign 
language to them on the road), there 
was a prospect of too much assistance. 
Seeing this, and saying as much in a 
few words to the slighter and younger of 
the two ladies, the gentleman put his 
wife’s arm over his shoulder, lifted her 
up, and carried her away. 

His friend, being left alone with the 
other visitors, walked slowly up and 
down the room, without coming to the 
fire again, pulling his black mustache 
in a contemplative manner, as if he felt 
himself committed to the late retort. 
While the subject of it was breathing 
injury in a corner, the Chief loftily ad- 
dressed this gentleman. 

“Your friend, sir,” said he, “ is — ha 
— is a little impatient ; and, in his im- 
patience, is not perhaps fully sensible of 
what he owes to — hum — to — but we 
will waive that, we will waive that. 
Your friend is a little impatient, sir.” 

“ It may be so, sir,” returned the 
other. “ But having had the honor of 
making that gentleman’s acquaintance 
at the hotel at Geneva, where we and 
much good company met some time ago, 
and having had the honor of exchanging 
company and conversation with that 
gentleman on several subsequent excur- 
sions, I can hear nothing — no, not e ven 
from one of your appearance and station, 
sir — detrimental to that gentleman.” 

“You are in no danger, sir, of hear- 
ing any such thing from me. In remark- 
ing that your friend has shown impa- 
tience, I say no such thing. I make 


254 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


that remark, because it is not to be 
doubted that my son, being by birth and 
by — ha — by education a — hum — a 
gentleman, would have readily adapted 
himself to any obligingly expressed wish 
on the subject of the fire being equally 
accessible to the whole of the present 
circle. Which, in principle, I — ha — 
for all are — hum — equal on these oc- 
casions — I consider right.” 

“ Good ! ” was the reply. “ And 
there it ends ! I am your son’s obedi- 
ent servant. I beg your son to receive 
the assurance of my profound consider- 
ation. And now, sir, I may admit, freely 
admit, that my friend is sometimes of a 
sarcastic temper.” 

“ The lady is your friend’s wife, 
sir?” 

“ The lady is my friend’s wife, sir.” 

“ She is very handsome.” 

“ Sir, she is peerless. They are still 
in the first year of their marriage. They 
are still partly on a marriage, and partly 
on an artistic tour.” 

“ Your friend is an artist, sir? ” 

The gentleman replied by kissing the 
fingers of his right hand, and wafting 
the kiss the length of his arm towards 
Heaven. As who should say, I devote 
him to the celestial Powers as an im- 
mortal artist ! 

“ But he is a man of family,” he add- 
ed. “ His connections are of the best. 
He is more than an artist : he is highly 
connected. He may, in effect, have re- 
pudiated his connections, proudly, im- 
patiently, sarcastically (I make the con- 
cession of both words) ; but he has them. 
Sparks that have been struck out during 
our intercourse have shown me this.” 

“ Well ! I hope,” said the lofty gen- 
tleman, with the air of finally disposing 
of the subject, “that the lady’s indis- 
position may be only temporary.” 

“ Sir, I hope so.” 

“ Mere fatigue, I dare say.” 

“ Not altogether mere fatigue, sir, for 
her mule stumbled to-day, and she fell 
from the saddle. She fell lightly, and 
was up again without assistance, and 
rode from us laughing ; but she com- 
plained towards evening of a slight 
bruise in the side. She spoke of it 
more than once, as we followed your 
party up the mountain.” 


The head of the large retinue, who 
was gracious but not familiar, appeared 
by this time to think that he had con- 
descended more than enough. He said 
no more, and there was silence for some 
quarter of an hour until supper ap- 
peared. 

With the supper came one of the 
young Fathers (there seemed to be no 
old Fathers) to take the head of the 
table. It was like the supper of an or- 
dinary Swiss hotel, and good red wine 
grown by the convent in more genial 
air was not wanting. The artist trav- 
eller calmly came and took his place 
at table when the rest sat down, with 
no apparent sense upon him of his late 
skirmish with the completely dressed 
traveller. 

“ Pray,” he inquired of the host, over 
his soup, “ has your convent many of 
its famous dogs now ? ” 

“ Monsieur, it has three.” 

“ I saw three in the gallery below. 
Doubtless the three in question.” 

The host, a slender, bright-eyed, dark 
young man of polite manners, whose 
garment was a black gown with strips 
of white crossed over it like braces, and 
who no more resembled the convention- 
al breed of Saint Bernard monks than 
he resembled the conventional breed of 
Saint Bernard dogs, replied, doubtless 
those were the three in question. 

“And I think,” said the artist trav- 
eller, “ I have seen one of them be- 
fore.” 

It was possible. He was a dog suffi- 
ciently well known. Monsieur might 
have easily seen him in the valley or 
somewhere on the lake, when li£ (the 
dog) had gone down with one of the 
order to solicit aid for the convent. 

“ Which is done in its regular season 
of the year, I think ? ” 

Monsieur was right. 

“ And never without the dog. The 
dog is very important.” 

Again Monsieur was right. The dog 
was very important. People were justly 
interested in the dog. As one of the 
dogs celebrated everywhere, Ma’am- 
selle would observe. 

Ma’amselle was a little slow to ob- 
serve it, as though she were not yet 
well accustomed to the French tongue. 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


255 


Mrs. General, however, observed it for 
her. 

“ Ask him if he has saved many 
lives ? ” said, in his native English, the 
young man who had been put out of 
countenance. 

The host needed no translation of the 
question. He promptly replied in 
French, “ No. Not this one.” 

“Why not?-*” the same gentleman 
asked. v * 

“ Pardon,” returned the host, com- 
posedly. “*Give him the opportunity 
and he will do it without doubt. For 
example, I am well convinced,” smiling 
sedately, as he cut up the dish of veal 
to be handed round, on the young man 
who had been put out of countenance, 
“ that if you, monsieur, would give him 
the opportunity, he would hasten with 
great ardor to fulfil his duty.” 

The artist traveller laughed. The 
insinuating traveller (who evinced a 
provident anxiety to get his full share 
of the supper), wiping some drops of 
wine from his mustache with a piece of 
bread, joined the conversation. 

“ It is becoming late in the year, my 
Father,” said he, “ for tourist travel- 
lers, is it not ? ” 

“Yes, it is late. Yet two or three 
weeks, at most, and we shall be left to 
the winter snows.” 

“And then,” said the insinuating 
traveller, “ for the scratching dogs and 
the buried children, according to the 
pictures ! ” 

“ Pardon,” said the host, not quite 
understanding the allusion. “ How, 
then the scratching dogs and the buried 
children according to the pictures? ” 

The artist traveller struck in again, 
before an answer could be given. 

“ Don’t you know,” he coldly inquired 
across the table of his companion, “that 
none but smugglers come this way in 
the winter or can have any possible 
business this way?” 

“ Holy blue ! No ; never heard of 
it.” 

“ So it is, I believe. And as they 
know the signs of the weather tolera- 
bly well, they don’t give much employ- 
ment to the dogs, — who have conse- 
quently died out rather, — though this 
house of entertainment is conveniently 


situated for themselves. Their young 
families, I am told, they usually leave 
at home. But it ’s a grand idea ! ” cried 
the artist traveller, unexpectedly rising 
into a tone of enthusiasm. “It’s a 
sublime idea. It ’s the finest idea in 
the world, and brings tears into a man’s 
eyes, by Jupiter!” He then went on 
eating his veal with great composure. 

There was enough of mocking incon- 
sistency at the bottom of this speech to 
make it rather discordant, though the 
manner was refined and the person well- 
favored, and though the depreciatory 
part of it was so skilfully thrown off as 
to be very difficult for one not perfectly 
acquainted with the English language 
to understand, or, even understanding, 
to take offence at ; so simple and dis- 
passionate was its tone. After finish- 
ing his veal in the midst of silence, the 
speaker again addressed his friend. 

“ Look,” said he, in his former tone, 
“ at this gentleman our host, not yet in 
the prime of life, who in so graceful a 
way and with such courtly urbanity and 
modesty presides over us ! Manners 
fit for a crown ! Dine with the Lord 
Mayor of London (if you can get an invi- 
tation) and observe the contrast. This 
dear fellow, with the finest cut face I 
ever saw, a face in perfect drawing, 
leaves some laborious life and comes up 
here I don’t know how many feet above 
the level of the sea, for no other pur- 
pose on earth (except enjoying himself, 
I hope, in a capital refectory) than to 
keep an hotel for idle poor devils like 
you and me, and leave the bill to our 
consciences ! Why, is n’t it a beautiful 
sacrifice? What do we want more to 
touch us? Because rescued people of 
interesting appearance are not, for eight 
or nine months out of every twelve, 
holding on here round the necks of the 
most sagacious of dogs carrying wooden 
bottles, shall we disparage the place ? 
No ! Bless the place. It ’s a great 
place, a glorious place!” 

The chest of the gray-haired gentle- 
man who was the Chief of the impor- 
tant party had swelled as if with a pro- 
test against his being numbered among 
poor devils. No sooner had the artist 
traveller ceased speaking than he him- 
self spoke with great dignity, as having 


256 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


it incumbent on him to take the lead 
in most places, and having deserted 
that duty for a little while. 

He weightily communicated his opin- 
ion to their host, that his life must 
be a very dreary life here in the win- 
ter. 

The host allowed to Monsieur that 
it was a little monotonous. The air 
was difficult to breathe for a length of 
time consecutively. The cold was very 
severe. One needed youth and strength 
to bear it. However, having them and 
the blessing of Heaven — 

Yes, that was very good. “ But the 
confinement,” said the gray-liaired gen- 
tleman. 

There were many days, even in bad 
weather, when it was possible to walk 
about outside. It was the custom to 
beat a little track, and take exercise 
there. 

“ But the space,” urged the gray- 
haired gentleman. “ So small. So 
— ha — very limited.” 

Monsieur would recall to himself that 
there were the refuges to visit, and that 
tracks had to be made to them also. 

Monsieur still urged, on the other 
hand, that the space was so — ha — 
hum — so very contracted. More than 
that. It was always the same, always 
the same. 

With a deprecating smile, the host 
gently raised and gently lowered his 
shoulders. That was true, he re- 
marked, but permit him to say that al- 
most all objects had their various points 
of view. Monsieur and he did not see 
this poor life of his from the same point 
of view. Monsieur was not used to 
confinement. 

“I — ha — yes, very true,” said the 
gray-haired gentleman. He seemed to 
receive quite a shock from the force of 
the argument. 

Monsieur, as an English traveller sur- 
rounded by all means of travelling pleas- 
antly ; doubtless possessing fortune, 
carriages, servants — 

“ Perfectly, perfectly. Without doubt,” 
said the gentleman. 

Monsieur could not easily place him- 
self in the position of a person who had 
not the power to choose, I will go here 
to-morrow, or there next day ; I will 


pass these barriers, I will enlarge those 
bounds. Monsieur could not realize, 
perhaps, how the mind accommodated 
itself in such things to the force of ne- 
cessity. 

“ It is true,” said Monsieur. “ We 
will — ha — not pursue the subject. 
You are — hum — quite accurate, I have 
no doubt. We will say no more.” 

The supper having come to a close, 
he drew his chair away as he spoke, 
and moved back to his former place by 
the fire. As it was very cold at the 
greater part of the table, the other 
guests also resumed their former seats 
by the fire, designing to toast them- 
selves well before going to bed. The 
host, when they rose from table, bowed 
to all present, wished them good night, 
and withdrew. But first the insinuating 
traveller had asked him if they could 
have some wine made hot ; «nd as he 
had answered Yes, and had presently af- 
terwards sent it in, that traveller, seated 
in the centre of the group, and in the 
full heat of the fire, was soon engaged 
in serving it out to the rest. 

At this time, the younger of the two 
young ladies, who had been silently at- 
tentive in her dark corner (the firelight 
was the chief light in the sombre room, . 
the lamp being smoky and dull) to w hat 
had been said of the absent lady, glided 
out. She was at a loss which way to 
turn, when she had softly closed the 
door ; but, after a little hesitation among 
the sounding passages and the many 
w'ays, came to a room in a corner of the 
main gallery, where the servants were 
at their supper. From these she ob- 
tained a lamp, and a direction to the 
lady’s room. 

It was up the great staircase on the 
story above. Here and there, the bare 
white walls were broken by an iron grate, 
and she thought as she went along that 
the place was something like a prison. 
The arched door of the lady’s room, or 
cell, w'as not quite shut. After knock- 
ing at it two or three times without re- 
ceiving an answer, she pushed it gently 
open, and looked in. 

The lady lay with closed eyes on the 
outside of the bed, protected from the 
cold by the blankets and w-rappers with 
which she had been covered when she 


LITTLE DORR IT. 


257 


revived from her fainting-fit. A dull 
light, placed in the deep recess of the win- 
dow, made little impression on the arched 
room. The visitor timidly stepped to 
the bed, and said, in a soft whisper, 
“ Are you better? ” 

The lady had fallen into a slumber, 
and the whisper was too low to awake 
her. Her visitor, standing quite still, 
looked at her attentively. 

“ She is very pretty,” she said to her- 
self. “ I never saw so beautiful a face. 
O, how unlike me ! ” 

It was a curious thing to say, but it 
had some hidden meaning, for it filled 
her eyes with tears. 

“ I know I must be right. I know he 
spoke of her that evening. I could 
very easily be wrong on any other sub- 
ject, but not on this, not on this ! ” 
With a quiet and tender hand she 
put aside a^traying fold of the sleeper’s 
hair, and then touched the hand that 
lay outside the covering. 

“ I like to look at her,” she breathed 
to herself. “ I like to see what has 
affected him so much.” 

She had not withdrawn her hand, 
when the sleeper opened her eyes, and 
started. 

“ Pray don’t be alarmed. I am only 
one of the travellers from down stairs. 
I came to ask if you were better, and if 
I could do anything for you.” 

“I think you have already been so 
kind as to send your servants to my as- 
sistance? ” 

“No, not I; that was my sister. 

- Are you better ? ” 

“ Much better. It is only a slight 
bruise, and has been well looked to, 
and is almost easy now. It made me 
giddy and faint in a moment. It had 
hurt me before ; but at last it overpow- 
ered me all at once.” 

“ May I stay with you until some one 
comes? Would you like it ? ” 

“ I should like it, for it is lonely here ; 
but I am afraid you will feel the cold too 
much.” 

“ I don’t mind cold. I am not deli- 
cate, if I look so.” She quickly moved 
one of the two rough chairs to the bed- 
side, and sat down. The other as 
quickly moved a part of some travelling 
wrapper from herself, and drew it over 


her, so that her arm, in keeping it about 
her, rested on her shoulder. 

“ You have so much the air of a kind 
nurse,” said the lady, smiling on her, 
“that you seem as if you had come to 
me from home.” 

“ I am very glad of it.” 

“ I was dreaming of home when I 
woke just now. Of my old home, I 
mean, before I was married.” 

“ And before you were so far away 
from it.” 

“ I have been much farther away from 
it than this ; but then I took the best 
part of it with me, and missed nothing. 
I felt solitary as I dropped asleep here, 
and, missing it a little, wandered back 
to it.” 

There was a sorrowfully affectionate 
and regretful sound in her voice, which 
made her visitor refrain from looking at 
her for the moment. 

“ It is a curious chance which at 
last brings us together under this cov- 
ering in which you have wrapped me,” 
said the visitor, after a pause; “for do 
you know, I think I have been looking 
for you, some time.” 

“ Looking for me? ” 

“ I believe I have a little note here, 
which I was to give to you whenever I 
found you. This is it. Unless I great- 
ly mistake, it is addressed to you. Is 
it not ? ” 

The ladv took it, and said Yes, and 
read it. Her visitor watched her as 
she did so. It was very short. She 
flushed a little as she put her lips to 
her visitor’s cheek, and pressed herhand. 

“ The dear young friend to whom he 
presents me may be a comfort to me 
at some time, he says. She is truly a 
comfort to me the first time I see her.” 

“ Perhaps you don’t,” said the visitor, 
hesitating, — “ perhaps you don’t know 
my story ? Perhaps he never told you 
my story?” 

“ No!” 

“ O no, why should he ! I have 
scarcely the right to tell it myself at 
present, because I have been entreated 
not to do so. There is not much in it, 
but it might account to you for my ask- 
ing you not to say anything about the let- 
ter here. You saw my family with me, 
perhaps? Some of them — I only say 


17 


LITTLE LORE IT. 


25S 

this to you — are a little proud, a 
little prejudiced.” 

“ You shall take it back again,” said 
the other ; and. then my husband is sure 
not to see it. He might see it and 
speak of it otherwise, by some accident. 
Will you put it in your bosom again, to 
be certain ? ” 

She did so with great care. Her 
small, slight hand was still upon the 
letter, when they heard some one in the 
gallery outside. 

“ I promised,” said the visitor, ris- 
ing, “ that I would write to him after 
seeing you (I could hardly fail to see 
you, sooner or later), and tell him if 
you were well and happy. I had better 
say you were well and happy.” 

“Yes, yes, yes ! Say I was very 
well and very happy. And that I 
thanked him affectionately, and would 
never forget him.” 

“ I shall see you in the morning. Af- 
ter that we are sure to meet again be- 
fore very long. Good night ! ” 

“ Good night. Thank you, thank 
you. Good night, my dear ! ” 

Both of them were hurried and flut- 
tered as they exchanged this parting, 
and as the visitor came out at the door. 
She had expected to meet the lady’s 
husband approaching it ; but the per- 
son in the gallery was not he : it was 
the traveller who had wiped the wine- 
drops from his mustache with the 
piece of bread. When he heard the 
step behind him, he turned round, — for 
he was walking away in the dark. 

His politeness, which was extreme, 
would not allow of the young lady’s 
lighting herself down stairs, or going 
down alone. He took her lamp, held 
it so as to throw the best light on the 
stone steps, and followed her all the 
way to the supper-room. She went 
down, not easily hiding how much she 
was inclined to shrink and tremble ; 
for the appearance of this traveller was 
particularly disagreeable to her. She 
had sat in her quiet corner before sup- 
per, imagining what he would have 
been in the scenes and places with- 
in her experience, until he inspired 
her with an aversion that made him 
little less than terrific. 

He followed her down with his smil- 


ing politeness, followed her in, and re- 
sumed his seat in the best place on the 
hearth. There, with the wood- fire, 
which was beginning to burn low, ris- 
ing and falling upon him in the dark 
room, he sat with his legs thrust out to 
warm, drinking the hot wine down to 
the lees, with a monstrous shadow imi- 
tating him on the wall and ceiling. 

The tired company had broken up, 
and all the rest were gone to bed ex- 
cept the young lady’s father, who dozed 
in his chair by the fire. The traveller 
had been at the pains of going a long 
way up stairs to his sleeping-room to 
fetch his pocket-flask of brandy. He 
told them so, as he poured its contents 
into what was left of the wine, and 
drank with a new relish. 

“May I ask, sir, if you are on your 
way to Italy ? ” 

The gray-haired gentleman had roused 
himself, and was preparing to withdraw. 
He answered in the affirmative. 

“I also 1 ” said the traveller. “ I 
shall hope to have the honor of offer- 
ing my compliments in fairer scenes, 
and under softer circumstances, than on 
this dismal mountain.” 

The gentleman bowed, distantly 
enough, and said he w r as obliged to him. 

“We poor gentlemen, sir,” said the 
traveller, pulling his mustache dry with 
his hand, for he had dipped it in the 
wine and brandy, — “we poor gentlemen 
do not travel like princes, but the cour- 
tesies and graces of life are precious to 
us. To your health, sir ! ” 

“ Sir, I thank you.” 

“ To the health of your distinguished 
family, — of the fair ladies your daugh- 
ters ! ” 

“ Sir, I thank you again. I wish you 
good night. My dear, are our — ha — 
our people in attendance?” 

“ They are close by, father.” 

“ Permit me ! ” said the traveller, 
rising and holding the door open, as the 
gentleman crossed the room towards 
it with his arm drawn through his daugh- 
ter’s. “ Good repose ! To the pleas- 
ure of seeing you once more ! To to- 
morrow ! ” 

As he kissed his hand, with his best 
manner and his daintiest- smile, the 
young lady drew a little nearer to her 


LITTLE D0RR1T. 


259 


father, and passed him with a dr^d of 
touching him. 

“ Humph ! ” said the insinuating 
traveller, whose manner shrunk, and 
whose voice dropped when he was left 
alone. “ If they all go to bed, why, I 
must go. They are in a devil of a hur- 
ry. One would think the night would 
be long enough, in this freezing silence 
and solitude, if one went to bed two 
hours hence ! ” 

Throwing back his head in emptying 
his glass, he cast his eyes upon the 
travellers’ book, which lay on the piano, 
open, with pens and ink beside it, as if 
the night’s names had been registered 
when he was absent. Taking it in his 
hand, he read these entries. 

William Dorrit, Esq. 

Frederick Dorrit, Esq. 

Edward Dorrit, Esq. 

Miss Dorrit 
Miss Amy Dorrit 
Mrs. General 

Mr. and Mrs. Henry Gowan. From 
France to Italy. 

To which he added, in a small, compli- 
cated hand, ending with a long lean 
flourish, not unlike a lasso thrown at all 
the rest of the names : — 

Blandois. Paris. From France to 
Italy. 

And then, with his nose coming down 
over his mustache, and his mustache 
going up under his nose, repaired to his 
allotted cell. 


CHAPTER II. 

MRS. GENERAL. 

It is indispensable to present the ac- 
complished lady, who was of sufficient 
importance in the suite of the Dorrit 
family to have a line to herself in the 
Travellers’ Book. 

Mrs. General was the daughter of a 
clerical dignitary in a cathedral town, 
where she had led the fashion until she 
was as near forty-five as a single lady 
can be. A stiff commissariat officer of 
sixty, famous as a martinet, had then 
become enamored of the gravity with 


which she drove the proprieties four-in- 
hand through the cathedral town soci- 
ety, and had solicited to be taken be- 
side her on the box of the cool coach of 
ceremony to which that team was har- 
nessed. His proposal of marriage being 
accepted by the lady, the commissary 
took his seat behind the proprieties with 
great decorum, and Mrs. Genera drove 
until the commissary died. In the 
course of their united journey, they ran 
over several people who came in the 
way of the proprieties ; but always in a 
high style, and with composure. 

The commissary having been buried 
with all the decorations suitable to the 
service (the whole team of proprieties 
were harnessed to his hearse, and they 
all had feathers and black velvet hous- 
ings, with his coat of arms in the cor- 
ner), Mrs. General began to inquire 
what quantity of dust and ashes was 
deposited at the bankers’. It then 
transpired that the commissary had so 
far stolen a march on Mrs. General as , 
to have bought himself an annuity some 
years before his marriage, and to have 
reserved that circumstance, in mention- 
ing, at the period of his proposal, that 
his income was derived from the inter- 
est of his money. Mrs. General conse- 
quently found her means so much di- 
minished, that, but for the perfect regu- 
lation of her mind, she might have felt 
disposed to question the accuracy of 
that portion of the late service which 
'had declared that the commissary could 
take nothing away w’ith him. 

In this state of affairs it occurred to 
Mrs. General, that she might “form 
the mind,” and eke the manners, of 
some young lady of distinction. Or, 
that she might harness the proprieties 
to the carriage of some rich young 
heiress or widow, and become at once 
the driver and guard of such vehicle 
through the social mazes. Mrs. Gen- 
eral’s communication of this idea to her 
clerical and commissariat connection 
was so warmly applauded that, but for 
the lady’s undoubted merit, it might 
have appeared as though they wanted 
to get rid of her. Testimonials repre- 
senting Mrs. General as a prodigy of 
piety, learning, virtue, and gentility 
were lavishly contributed from influen- 


And suite. 
From France 
to Italy. 


2 JO 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


tial quarters ; and one venerable arch- 
deacon even shed tears in recording his 
testimony to her perfections (described 
to him by persons on whom he could 
rely), though he had never had the 
honor and moral gratification of set- 
ting eyes on Mrs. General in all his 
life. 

Thus delegated on her mission, as it 
were by Church and State, Mrs. Gen- 
eral, who had always occupied high 
ground, felt in a condition to keep it, 
and began by putting herself up at a 
very high figure. An interval of some 
duration elapsed, in which there was 
no bid for Mrs. General. At length a 
county widower, with a daughter of 
fourteen, opened negotiations with the 
lady ; and as it was a part either of the 
native dignity or of the artificial policy 
of Mrs. General (but certainly one or 
the other), to comport herself as if she 
were much more sought than seeking, 
the widower pursued Mrs. General un- 
til he prevailed upon her to form his 
daughter’s mind and manners. 

The execution of this trust occupied 
Mrs. General about seven years, in the 
course of which time she made the 
tour of Europe, and saw most of that 
extensive miscellany of objects which 
it is essential that all persons of polite 
cultivation should see with other peo- 
ple’s eyes, and never with their own. 
When her charge was at length formed, 
the marriage, not only of the young 
lady, but likewise of her father the 
widower, was resolved on. The wid- 
ower then finding Mrs. General both 
inconvenient and expensive, became of 
a sudden almost as much affected by 
her merits as the archdeacon had been, 
and circulated such praises of her sur- 
passing worth, in all quarters where he 
thought an opportunity might arise of 
transferring the blessing to somebody 
else, that Mrs. General was a name 
more honorable than ever. 

The phoenix was to let, on this ele- 
vated perch, when Mr. Dorrit, who had 
lately succeeded to his property, meiv 
tioned to his bankers that he wished 
to discover a lady, well-bred, accom- 
plished, well - con nected, well - accus- 
tomed to good society, who was quali- 
fied at once to complete the education 


of his daughters, and to be their matron 
or chaperon. Mr. Dorrit’s bankers, as 
the bankers of the county widower, 
instantly said, “ Mrs. General.” 

Pursuing the light so fortunately hit 
upon, and finding the concurrent testi- 
mony of the whole of Mrs. General’s 
acquaintance to be of the pathetic na- 
ture already recorded, Mr. Dorrit took 
the trouble of going down to the county 
of the county widower, to see Mrs. 
General. In whom he found a lady of 
a quality superior to his highest expec- 
tations. 

“ Might I be excused,” said Mr. 
Dorrit, “if I inquired — ha — what re- 
mune — ” 

“ Why, indeed,” returned Mrs. Gen- 
eral, stopping the word, “it is a subject 
on which I prefer to avoid entering. 
I have never entered on it with my 
friends here ; and I cannot overcome 
the delicacy, Mr. Dorrit, with which I 
have always regarded it. I am not, as 
I hope you are aware, a governess — ” 

“O dear, no!” said Mr. Dorrit. 
“Pray, madam, do not imagine for a 
moment that I think so.” He really 
blushed to be suspected of it. 

Mrs. General gravely inclined her 
head. “ I cannot, therefore, put a price 
upon services which it is a pleasure to 
me to render if I can render them spon- 
taneously, but which I could not render 
in mere return for any consideration. 
Neither do I know how, or where, to 
find a case parallel to my own. It is 
peculiar.” 

No doubt. But how then (Mr. Dor- 
rit not unnaturally hinted) could the 
subject be approached? 

• “I cannot object,” said Mrs. Gen- 
eral, — “though even that is disagreea- 
ble to me, — to Mr. Dorrit’s inquiring, 
in confidence, of my friends here, what 
amount they may have been accus- 
tomed, at quarterly intervals, to pay to 
my credit at my bankers’.” 

Mr. Dorrit bowed his acknowledg- 
ments. 

“ Permit me to add.” said Mrs. 
General, “that, beyond this, I can 
never resume the topic. Also that I 
can accept no second or inferior posi- 
tion. If the honor were proposed to 
me of becoming known to Mr. Dorrit’s 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


family — I think two daughters were 
mentioned ? — ” 

“ Two daughters.” 

“ I could only accept it on terms of 
perfect equality, as a companion, pro- 
tector, Mentor, and friend.” 

Mr. Dorrit, in spite of his sense of his 
importance, felt as if it would be quite 
a kindness in her to accept it on any 
conditiohs. He almost said as much. 

“ I think,” repeated Mrs. General, 
“ two daughters were mentioned ? ” 

‘‘Two daughters,” said Mr. Dorrit, 
again. 

“It would therefore,” said Mrs Gen- 
eral, “be necessary to add a third more 
to the payment (whatever its amount 
may prove to be), which my friends 
here have been accustomed to make to 
my bankers.” 

Mr. Dorrit lost no time in referring 
the delicate question to the county 
widower, and, finding that he had been 
accustomed to pay three hundred pounds 
a year to the credit of Mrs. General, 
arrived, without any severe strain on 
his arithmetic, at the conclusion that he 
himself must pay four. Mrs. General 
being an article of that lustrous surface 
which suggests that it is worth any 
money, he made a formal proposal to 
be allowed to have the honor and pleas- 
ure of regarding her as a member of 
his family. Mrs. General conceded 
that high privilege, and here she was. 

In person, Mrs. General, including 
her skirts which had much to do with 
it, was of a dignified and imposing ap- 
pearance ; ample, rustling, gravely vo- 
luminous ; always upright behind the 
proprieties. She blight have been ta- 
ken — had been taken — to the top of 
the Alps and the bottom of Hercula- 
neum, without disarranging a fold in 
her dress, or displacing a pin. If her 
countenance and hair had rather a 
floury appearance, as though from liv- 
ing in some transcendent] y genteel Mill, 
it was rather because she was a chalky 
creation altogether than because she 
mended her complexion with violet 
powder, or had turned gray. If her 
eyes had no expression, it was probably 
because they had nothing to express. 
If she had few wrinkles, it was because 
her mind had never traced its name or 


261 

any other inscription on her face. A 
cool, waxy, blown-out woman, who had 
never lighted well. 

Mrs. General had no opinions. Her 
way of forming a mind was to prevent 
it from forming opinions. She had a 
little circular set of mental grooves or 
rails, on which she started little trains 
of other people’s opinions, which never 
overtook one another, and never got 
anywhere. Even her propriety could 
not dispute that there was impropriety 
in the world ; but Mrs. General’s way 
of getting rid of it was to put it out of 
sight, and made believe that there was 
no such thing. This was another of 
her ways of forming a mind, — to cram 
all articles of difficulty into cupboards, 
lock them up, and say they had no ex- 
istence. It was the easiest way, and, 
beyond all comparison, the properest. 

Mrs. General was not to be told of 
anything shocking. Accidents, mis- 
eries, and offences were never to be 
mentioned before her. Passion was to 
go to sleep in the presence of Mrs. 
General, and blood was to change to 
milk and water. The little that was 
left in the world, when all these deduc- 
tions were made, it was Mrs. General’s 
province to varnish. In that formation 
process of hers, she dipped the smallest 
of brushes into the largest of pots, and 
varnished the surface of every object 
that came under consideration. The 
more cracked it was, the more Mrs. 
General varnished it. 

There was varnish in Mrs. General’s 
voice, varnish in Mrs. General’s touch, 
an atmosphere of varnish round Mrs. 
General’s figure. Mrs. General’s 
dreams ought to have been varnished 
— if she had any — lying asleep in the 
arms of the good Saint Bernard, with 
the feathery snow falling on his house- 
top. 


CHAPTER III. 

ON THE ROAD. 

The bright morning sun dazzled the 
eyes, the snow had ceased, the mists 
had vanished, the mountain air was so 
clear and light that the new sensation 


262 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


of breathing it was like the having en- 
tered on a new existence. To help the 
delusion, the solid ground itself seemed 
gone, and the mountain, a shining 
waste of immense white heaps and 
masses, to be a region of cloud floating 
between the blue sky above and the 
earth far below. 

Some dark specks in the snow, like 
knots upon a little thread, beginning 
at the convent door and winding away 
down the descent in broken lengths 
which were not yet pieced together, 
showed where the Brethren were at 
work in several places clearing the 
track. Already the snow had begun to 
be foot-thawed again about the door. 
Mules were busily brought out, tied 
to the rings in the wall, and laden; 
strings of bells were buckled on, bur- 
dens were adjusted, the voices of driv- 
ers and riders sounded musically. Some 
of the earliest had even already re- 
sumed their journey ; and, both on the 
level summit by the dark water near 
the convent, and on the downward 
way of yesterday’s ascent, little moving 
figures of men and mules, reduced to 
miniatures by the immensity around, 
went with a clear tinkling of bells and 
a pleasant harmony of tongues. 

In the supper-room of last night a 
new fire, piled upon the feather}’- ashes 
of the old one, shone upon a homely 
breakfast of loaves, butter, and milk. 
It also shone on the courier of the 
Dorrit family making tea for his party 
from a supply he had brought up with 
him, together with several other small 
stores which were chiefly laid in for 
the use of the strong body of incon- 
venience. Mr. Gowan, and Blandois 
of Paris, had already breakfasted, and 
were walking up and down by the lake, 
smoking their cigars. 

“Gowan, eh?” muttered Tip, other- 
wise Edward Dorrit, Esquire, turning 
over the leaves of the book, when the 
courier had left them to breakfast. 
“ Then Gowan is the name of a puppy, 
that’s all I have got to say ! If it w'as 
worth my w'hile, I ’d pull his nose. 
But it isn’t worth my while, — fortu- 
nately for him. How ’s his wife, Amy? 

I suppose you know. You generally 
know things of that sort.” 


“ She is better, Edward. But they 
are not going to-day.” 

“ Oh ! They are not going to-day ! 
Fortunately for that fellow too,” said 
Tip, “or he and I might have come 
into collision.” 

“It is thought better here that she 
should lie quiet to-day, and not be 
fatigued and shaken by the ride down 
until to-morrow.” 

“ With all my heart. But you talk 
as if you had been nursing her. You 
haven’t been relapsing into (Mrs. 
General is not here) into old habits, 
have you, Amy?” 

He asked her the question with a 
sly glance of observation at Miss Fan- 
ny, and at his father too. 

“ I have only been in to ask her if 
I could do anything for her, Tip,” said 
Little Dorrit. 

“You needn’t call me Tip, Amy, 
child,” returned that young gentleman 
with a frown; “because that’s an old 
habit, and one you may as well lay 
aside.” 

“ I did n’t mean to say so, Edward, 
dear. I forgot. It was so natural 
once, that it seemed at the moment the 
right word.” 

“O yes!” Miss Fanny struck in. 
“ Natural, and right word, and once, 
and all the rest of it ! Nonsense, you 
little thing ! I know perfectly well 
why you have been taking such an 
interest in this Mrs. Gowan. You can’t 
blind me." 

“I will not try to, Fanny. Don’t 
be angry.” 

“Oh! angry ! ” returned that young 
lady with a flounce. “ I have no 
patience ” (which indeed was the 
truth). 

“Pray, Fanny,” said Mr. Dorrit, 
raising his eyebrows, “ what do you 
mean? Explain yourself.” 

“Oh! Never mind, pa,” replied 
Miss Fanny, “it’s no great matter. 
Amy will understand me. She knew, 
or knew of, this Mrs. Gowan before 
yesterday, and she may as well admit 
that she did.” 

“ My child,” said Mr. Dorrit, turning 
to his younger daughter, “ has your 
sister — any — ha — authority for this 
curious statement ? ” 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


263 


“ However meek we are,” Miss 
Fanny struck in before she could an- 
swer, “ we don’t go creeping into peo- 
ple’s rooms on the tops of cold moun- 
tains, and sitting perishing in the frost 
with people, unless we know something 
about them beforehand. It ’s not very 
hard to divine whose friend Mrs. Gow- 
an is.” 

“Whose friend?” inquired her fa- 
ther. 

“ Pa, I am sorry to say,” returned 
Miss Fanny, who had by this time suc- 
ceeded in goading herself into a state 
of much ill-usage and grievance, which 
she was often at great pains to do, 
“that I believe her to be a friend of 
that very objectionable and unpleasant 
person, who, with a total absence of all 
delicacy, which our experience might 
have led us to expect from him, insulted 
us and outraged our feelings in so pub- 
lic and wilful a manner, on an occasion 
to which it is understood among us 
that we will not more pointedly allude.” 

“ Amy, my child,” said Mr. Dorrit, 
tempering a bland severity with a dig- 
nified affection, “ is this the case ? ” 

Little Dorrit mildly answered, Yes, it 
was. 

“ Yes, it is ! ” cried Miss Fanny. 
“ Of course ! I said so ! And now, pa, 
I do declare once for all,” this young 
lady was in the habit of declaring the 
same thing once for all every day of 
her life, and even several times in a 
day, “ that this is shameful ! I do de- 
clare once for all that it ought to be put 
a stop to. Is it not enough that we 
have gone through what is only known 
to ourselves, but are we to have it thrown 
in our faces, perseveringly and syste- 
matically, by the very person who should 
spare our feelings most ? Are we to be 
exposed to this unnatural conduct every 
moment of our lives ? Are we never 
to be permitted to forget ? I say again, 
it is absolutely infamous ! ” 

“ Well, Amy,” observed her brother, 
shaking his head, “ you know I stand 
by you whenever I can, and on most 
occasions. But I must say, that upon 
my soul I do consider it rather an un- 
accountable mode of showing your sis- 
terly affection, that you should back up 
a man who treated me in the most un- 


gentlemanly way in which one man can 
treat another. And who,” he added 
convincingly, “ must be a low-minded 
thief, you know, or he nevdlfccould have 
conducted himself as he did.” 

“And see,” said Miss Fanny, — “ see 
what is involved in this ! Can we ever 
hope to be respected by our servants ? 
Never. Here are our two women, and 
pa’s valet, and a footman, and a cou- 
rier, and all sorts of dependants, and yet, 
in the midst of these, we are to have 
one of ourselves rushing about with 
tumblers of cold water, like a menial ! 
Why, a policeman,” said Miss Fanny, 
“ if a beggar had a fit in the street, 
could but go plunging about with tum- 
blers, as this very Amy did in this very 
room before our very eyes last night ! ” 

“ I don’t so much mind that, once in 
away,” remarked Mr. Edw'ard ; “but 
your Clennam, as he thinks proper to 
call himself, is another thing.” 

“ He is a part of the same thing,” 
returned Miss Fanny, “and of a piece 
with all the rest. He obtruded him- 
self upon us in the first instance. We 
never wanted him. I always showed 
him, for one, that I could have dis- 
pensed with his company with the 
greatest pleasure. He then commits 
that gross outrage itpon our feelings, 
which he never could or w r ould have 
committed but for the delight he took in 
exposing us ; and then we are to be 
demeaned for the service of his friends ! 
Why, I don’t wonder at this Mr. Gow- 
an’s conduct towards you. What else 
was to be expected when he was en- 
joying our past misfortunes, — gloating 
over them at the moment ! ” 

“ Father — Edward — no indeed ! ” 
pleaded Little Dorrit. “ Neither Mr. 
nor Mrs. Gowan had ever heard our 
name. They w’ere, and they are, quite 
ignorant of our history.” 

“ So much the w'orse,” retorted Fan- 
ny, determined not to admit anything 
in extenuation, “ for then you have no 
excuses If they had known about us, 
you might have felt yourself called upon 
to conciliate them. That w'ould have 
been a weak and ridiculous mistake, but 
I can respect a mistake, whereas I can’t 
respect a wilful and deliberate abas- 
ing of those who should be nearest and 


264 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


dearest to us. No, I can’t respect that. 
I can do nothing but denounce that.” 

“ I never offend you wilfully, Fanny,” 
said Little 5|prrit, “ though you are so 
hard with me.” 

“ Then you should be more careful, 
Amy,” returned her sister. “ If you 
do such things by accident, you should 
be more careful. If I happened to 
have been born in a peculiar place, 
and under peculiar circumstances that 
blunted my knowledge of propriety, I 
fancy I should think myself bound to 
consider, at every step, ‘ Am I going, 
ignorantly, to compromise any near and 
dear relations ? ’ That is what I fancy 
/ should do, if it was my case.” 

Mr. Dorrit now interposed at once 
to stop these painful subjects by his 
authority, and to point their moral by 
his w'isdom. 

“ My dear,” said he to his younger 
daughter, “I beg you to — ha — to say 
no more. Your sister Fanny expresses 
herself strongly, but not without consid- 
erable reason. You have now a — hum 
— a great position to support. That 
great position is not occupied by your- 
self alone, but by — ha — by me, and — 
ha hum — by us. Us. Now, it is in- 
cumbent upon all people in an exalted 
position, but it is particularly so on this 
family, for reasons which I — ha — will 
not dwell upon, to make themselves re- 
spected. To be vigilant in making 
themselves respected. Dependants, to 
respect us, must be — ha — kept at a 
distance and — hum — kept down. 
Down. Therefore, your not exposing 
yourself to the remarks of our attend- 
ants, by appearing to have at any time 
dispensed with their services and per- 
formed them for yourself, is — ha — 
highly important.” 

“ Why, who can doubt it ? ” cried 
Miss Fanny. “ It ’s the essence of ev- 
erything ! ” 

“ Fanny,” returned her father, gran- 
dPoquentlv, “give me leave, my dear. 
We then come to — ha — to Mr. Clen- 
mm. I am free to say that 1 do not, 
Amy,_ share your sister’s sentiments. — 
that is to say altogether — hum — alto- 
gether — in reference to Mr. Clennanr. 
I am content to regard that individual in 
the light of — ha — generally — a well- 


behaved person. Hum. A well-behaved 
person. Nor will I inquire whether 
Mr. Clennam did, at any time, obtrude 
himself on — ha — my society. He 
knew my society to be — hum — sought, 
and his plea might be that he regarded 
me in the light of a public character. 
But there were circumstances attend- 
ing my — ha — slight knowledge of Mr. 
Clennam (it was very slight), which,” 
here Mr. Dorrit became extremely grave 
and impressive, “would render it highly 
indelicate in Mr. Clennam to — ha — to 
seek to renew communication with me 
or with any member of my family under 
existing circumstances. If Mr. Clen- 
nam has sufficient delicacy to perceive 
the impropriety of any such attempt, I 
am bound as a responsible gentleman 
to — ha — defer to that delicacy on his 
part. If, on the other hand, Mr. Clen- 
nam has not that delicacy, 1 cannot for 
a moment — ha — hold any correspond- 
ence with so — hum — coarse a mind. 
In either case, it would appear that Mr. 
Clennam is put altogether out of the 
question, and that we have nothing to 
do with him or he. with us. Ha — Mrs. 
General ! ” 

The entrance of the lady whom he 
announced, to take her place at the 
breakfast-table, terminated the discus- 
sion. Shortly afterwards, the courier 
announced that the valet, and the foot- 
man, and the two maids, and the four 
guides, and the fourteen mules, were in 
readiness ; so the breakfast party went 
out to the convent door to join the cav- 
alcade. 

Mr. Gowan stood aloof with his cigar 
and pencil, but Mr. Blandois was on 
the spot to pay his respects to the ladies. 
When he gallantly pulled off his slouched 
hat to Little Dorrit, she thought he had 
even a more sinister look, standing 
swart and cloaked in the snow, than he 
had in the firelight overnight. But, 
as both her father and her sister received 
his homage with some favor, she re- 
frained from expressing any distrust of 
him, lest it should prove to be a 
new blemish derived from her prison 
birth. 

Nevertheless, as they wound down 
the rugged way while the convent was 
yet in sight, she more than once looked 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


265 


round, and descried Mr. Blandois, 
backed by the convent smoke which 
rose straight and high from the chim- 
neys in a golden film, always standing 
on one jutting point looking down after 
them. Long after he was a mere black 
stick in the snow, she felt as though she 
could yet see that smile of his, that high 
nose, and those eyes that were too near 
it. And even after that, when the con- 
vent was gone and some light morning 
clouds veiled the pass below it, the 
ghastly skeleton arms by the wayside 
seemed to be all pointing up at him. 

More treacherous than snow, perhaps, 
colder at heart, and harder to melt, 
Blandois of Paris by degrees passed out 
of her mind, as they came down into 
the softer regions. Again the sun was 
warm, again the streams descending 
from glaciers and snowy caverns were 
refreshing to drink at, again they came 
among the pine-trees, the rocky rivu- 
lets, the verdant heights and dales, the 
wooden chalets and rough zigzag fences, 
of Swiss country. Sometimes the way 
so widened that she and her father could 
ride abreast. And then to look at him, 
handsomely clothed in his furs and 
broadcloths, rich, free, numerously 
served and attended, his eyes roving 
far away among the glories of the land- 
scape. no miserable screen before them 
to darken his sight and cast its shadow 
on him, was enough. 

Her uncle was so far rescued from 
that shadow of old, that he wore the 
clothes they gave him, and performed 
some ablutions as a sacrifice to the fam- 
ily credit, and went where he was ta- 
ken, with a certain patient animal enjoy- 
ment, which seemed to express that the 
air and change did him good. In all 
other respects, save one, he shone with 
no light but such as was reflected from 
his brother. His brother’s greatness, 
wealth, freedom, and grandeur pleased 
him without any reference to himself. 
Silent and retiring, he had no use for 
speech when he could hear his brother 
speak ; no desire to be waited on, so 
that the servants devoted themselves to 
his brother. The only noticeable change 
he originated in himself, was an altera- 
tion in his manner to his younger niece. 
Every day it refined more and more in- 


to a marked respect, very rarely shown 
by age to youth, and still more rarely 
susceptible, one would have said, of the 
fitness with which he invested it. On 
those occasions when Miss Fanny did 
declare once for all, he would take the 
next opportunity of baring his gray head 
before his younger niece, and of help- 
ing her to alight, or handing her to the 
carriage, or showing her any other at- 
tention, with the profoundest deference. 
Yet it never appeared misplaced or 
forced, being always heartily simple, 
spontaneous, and genuine. Neither 
w’ould he ever consent, even at his 
brother’s request, to be helped to any 
place before her, or to take precedence 
of her in anything. So jealous was he 
of her being respected, that on this very 
journey down from the Great Saint 
Bernard, he took sudden and violent 
umbrage at the footman’s being remiss 
to hold her stirrup, though standing 
n€ar when she dismounted ; and un- 
speakably astonished the whole retinue 
by charging at him on a hard-headed 
mule, riding him into a corner, and 
threatening to trample him to death. 

They were a goodly company, and 
the Innkeepers all but worshipped 
them. Wherever they went, their im- 
portance preceded them in the person 
of the courier riding before, to see that 
the rooms of state were ready. He 
was the herald of the family procession. 
The great travelling-carriage came 
next ; containing, inside, Mr. Dorrit, 
Miss Dorrit, Miss Amy Dorrit, and Mrs. 
General ; outside, some of the retainers, 
and (in fine weather) Edward Dorrit, Es- 
quire, for whom the box was reserved. 
Then came the chariot containing Fred- 
erick Dorrit, Esquire, and an empty place 
occupied by Edward Dorrit, Esquire, 
in wet weather. Then came the four- 
gon with the rest of the retainers, the 
heavy baggage, and as much as it could 
carry of the mud and dust which the 
other vehicles left behind. 

These equipages adorned. the yard of 
the hotel at Martigny on the return of 
the family from their mountain excur- 
sion. Other vehicles were there, much 
company being on the road, from the 
patched Italian Vettura — like the body 
of a swing from an English fair put 


256 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


upon a wooden tray on wheels, and 
having another wooden tray without 
wheels put atop of it — to the trim 
English carriage. But there was anoth- 
er adornment of the hotel which Mr. Dor- 
rit had not bargained for. Two strange 
travellers embellished one of his rooms. 

The Innkeeper, hat in hand in the 
yard, swore to the courier that he was 
blighted, that he was desolated, that 
he was profoundly afflicted, that he was 
the most miserable and unfortunate of 
beasts, that he had the head of a wood- 
en pig. He ought never to have made 
the concession, he said, but the very 
genteel lady had so passionately prayed 
him for the accommodation of that 
room to dine in, only for a little half- 
hour, that he had been vanquished. The 
little half-hour was expired, the lady 
and gentleman were taking their little 
dessert and half-cup of coffee, the note 
was paid, the horses were ordered, they 
would depart immediately; but, owii%'* 
to an unhappy destiny and the curse of 
Heaven, they were not yet gone. 

Nothing could exceed Mr. Dorrit’s 
indignation, as he turned at the foot of 
the staircase on hearing these apologies. 
He felt that the family dignity was 
struck at by an assassin’s hand. He 
•had a sense of his dignity, which was 
of the most exquisite nature. He 
could detect a design upon it when no- 
body else had any perception of the 
fact. His life was made an agony by 
the number of fine scalpels that he felt 
to be incessantly engaged in dissecting 
his dignity. 

“ Is it possible, sir,” said Mr. Dorrit, 
reddening excessively, “ that you have 
— ha — had the audacity to place one 
of my rooms at the disposition of any 
other person ? ” 

Thousands of pardons ! It was the 
host’s profound misfortune to have 
been overcome by that too genteel 
lady. He besought Monseigneur not 
to enrage himself. He threw himself 
on Monseigneur for clemency. If Mon- 
seigneur would have the distinguished 
goodness to occupy the other salon es- 
pecially reserved for him, for but five 
minutes, all would go well. 

“ No, sir,” said Mr. Dorrit. “ I will 
not occupy any salon. I will leave 


your house without eating or drinking, 
or setting foot in it. How do you dare 
to act like this ? Who am 1 that you — 
ha — separate me from other gentle- 
men ? ” 

Alas ! The host called all the uni- 
verse to witness that Monseigneur was 
the most amiable of the whole body of 
nobility, the most important, the most 
estimable, the most honored. If he 
separated Monseigneur from others, it 
was only because he was more dis- 
tinguished, more cherished, more gen- 
erous, more renowned. 

“ Don’t tell me so, sir,” returned Mr. 
Dorrit, in a mighty heat. “You have 
affronted me. You have heaped insults 
upon me. How dare you ? Explain 
yourself.” 

Ah, just Heaven, then, how could the 
host explain himself when he had noth- 
ing more to explain ; when he had only 
to apologize, and confide himself to the 
so well-known magnanimity of Mon- 
seigneur ! 

“ I tell you, sir,” said Mr. Dorrit, 
panting with anger, “ that you separate 
me — ha — from other gentlemen ; that 
you make distinctions between me and 
other gentlemen of fortune and station. 
I demand of you, why ? I wish to know 
on — ha — what authority, on whose 
authority. Reply, sir. Explain. An- 
swer why.” 

Permit the landlord humbly to sub- 
mit to Monsieur the Courier then, that 
Monseigneur, ordinarily so gracious, en- 
raged himself without cause. There 
was no why. Monsieur the Courier 
would represent to Monseigneur, that 
he deceived himself in suspecting that 
there was any why, but the why his de- 
voted servant had already had the honor 
to present to him. The very genteel 
lady — 

“ Silence ! ” cried Mr. Dorrit. “Hold 
your tongue ! I will hear no more of 
the very genteel lady ; I will hear no 
more of you. Look at this family — my 
family — a family more genteel than any 
lady. You have treated this family with 
disrespect ; you have been insolent to 
this family. I ’ll ruin you. Ha — send 
for the horses, pack the carriages, 

I ’ll not set foot in this man’s house 
again ! ” 


LITTLE 

No one had interfered in the dispute, 
which was beyond the French colloquial 
powers of Edward Dorrit, Esquire, and 
scarcely within the province of the 
ladies. Miss Fanny, however, now 
supported her father with great bitter- 
ness ; declaring, in her native tongue, 
that it was quite clear there was some- 
thing special in this man’s impertinence ; 
and that she considered it important 
that he should be, by some means, 
forced to give up his authority for mak- 
ing distinctions between that family and 
other wealthy families. What the rea- 
sons of his presumption could be, she 
was at a loss to imagine ; but reasons 
he must have, and they ought to be 
torn from him. 

All the guides, mule-drivers, and idlers 
in the yard had made themselves pai’ties 
to the angry conference, and were much 
impressed by the courier’s now bestir- 
ring himself to get the carriages out. 
With the aid of some dozen people to 
each wheel, this was done at a great 
cost of noise ; and then the loading was 
proceeded with, pending the arrival of 
the horses from the post-house. 

But the very genteel lady’s English 
chariot being already horsed and at the 
inn-door, the landlord had slipped up 
stairs to represent his hard case. This 
was notified to the yard by his now 
coming down the staircase in attendance 
on the gentleman and the lady, and by 
his pointing out the offended majesty of 
Mr. Dorrit to them with a significant 
motion of his hand. 

“ Beg your pardon,” said the gentle- 
man, detaching himself from the lady, 
and coming forward. “ I am a man of 
few words and a bad hand at an 
explanation, — but lady here is ex- 
tremely anxious that there should be no 
Row. Lady — a mother of mine, in 
point of fact — wishes me to say that 
she hopes no Row.” 

Mr. Dorrit, still panting under his 
injury, saluted the gentleman, and sa- 
luted the lady, in a distant, final, and 
invincible manner. 

“No, but really — here, old feller ; 
you ! ” This was the gentleman’s way 
of appealing to Edward Dorrit, Esquire, 
on whom he pounced as a great and 
providential relief. “ Let you and I try 


DORRIT. 267 

to make this all right. Lady so very 
much wishes no Row.” 

Edward Dorrit, Esquire, led a little 
apart by the button, assumed a diplo- 
matic expression of countenance in re- 
plying, “ Why, you must confess, that 
when you bespeak a lot of rooms before- 
hand and they belong to you, it ’s not 
pleasant to find other people in ’em.” 

“No,” said the other, “1 know it 
is n’t. I admit it. Still, let you and I 
try to make it all right, and avoid Row. 
The fault is not this chap’s at all, but 
my mother’s. Being a remarkably fine 
woman with no bigodd nonsense about 
her, — well educated, too, — she was 
too many for this chap. Regularly 
pocketed him.” 

“ If that ’s the case — ” Edward Dor- 
rit, Esquire, began. 

“ Assure you ’pon my soul ’t is the 
case. Consequently,” said the other 
gentleman, retiring on his main posi- 
tion, “ why Row ? ” 

“ Edmund,” said the lady from the 
doorway, “ I hope you have explained, 
or are explaining, to the satisfaction of 
this gentleman and his family, that the 
civil landlord is not to blame ? ” 

“ Assure you, ma’am,” returned Ed- 
mund, “ perfectly paralyzing myself with 
trying it on.” He then looked stead- 
fastly at Edward Dorrit, Esquire, for 
some seconds, and suddenly added, in 
a burst of confidence, “ Old feller ! Is 
it all right ? ” 

“ I don’t know, after all,” said the 
lady, gracefully advancing a step or two 
towards Mr. Dorrit, “but that I had 
better say myself, at once, that I as- 
sured this good man I took all the con- 
sequences on myself of occupying one 
of a stranger’s suite of rooms, during his 
absence, for just as much (or as little) 
time as I could dine in. I had no idea 
the rightful owner would come back so 
soon, nor had I any idea that he had 
come back, or I should have hastened to 
make restoration of my ill-gotten cham- 
ber, and have offered my explanation 
and apology. I trust in saying this — ” 

For a moment the lady with a glass 
at her eye stood transfixed and speech- 
less before the two Miss Dorrits. At 
the same moment. Miss Fanny, in the 
foreground of a grand pictorial compo- 


263 


LITTLE D0RR1T. 


sition, formed by the family, the family 
equipages, and the family servants, 
held her sister tight under one arm to 
detain her on the spot, and with the 
other arm fanned herself with a distin- 
guished air, and negligently surveyed 
the lady from head to foot. 

The lady, recovering herself quickly, 

— for it was Mrs. Merdle and she was 
not easily dashed, — went on to add that 
she trusted, in saying this, she apolo- 
gized for her boldness, and restored this 
well-behaved landlord to the favor that 
was so very valuable to him. Mr. 
Dorrit, on the altar of whose dignity 
all this was incense, made a gracious 
reply ; and said that his people should 

— ha — countermand his horses, and he 
would — hum — overlook what he had 
at first supposed to be an affront, but 
now regarded as an honor. Upon this, 
the bosom bent to him ; and its owner, 
with a wonderful command of feature, 
addressed a winning smile of adieu to 
the two sisters, as young ladies of for- 
tune in whose favor she was much pre- 
possessed, and whom she had never had 
the gratification of seeing before. 

Not so, however, Mr. Sparkler. This 
gentleman, becoming transfixed at the 
same moment as his lady-mother, could 
not by any means unfix himself again, 
but stood stiffly staring at the whole 
composition with Miss Fanny in the 
foreground. On his mother’s saying, 

“ Edmund, we are quite ready ; will 
you give me your arm?” he seemed, 
by the motion of his lips, to reply with 
some remark comprehending the form 
of words in which his shining talents 
found the most frequent utterance, but 
he relaxed no muscle. So fixed was his 
figure, that it would have been matter 
of some difficulty to bend him suffi- 
ciently to get him in the carriage door, 
if he had not received the timely assist- 
ance of a maternal pull from within. 
He was no sooner within than the pad 
of the little window in the back of the 
chariot disappeared, and his eye usurped 
its place. There it remained as long 
as so small an object was discernible, 
and probably much longer, staring (as 
though something inexpressibly surpris- 
ing should happen to a codfish) like an 
ill-executed eye in a large locket. 


This encounter was so highly agreea- 
ble to Miss Fanny, and gave her so 
much to think of with triumph after- 
wards, that it softened her asperities 
exceedingly. When the procession was 
again in motion next day, she occupied 
her place in it with a new gayety ; and 
showed such a flow of spirits, indeed, 
that Mrs. General looked rather sur- 
prised. 

Little Dorrit was glad to be found no 
fault with, and to see that Fanny -was 
pleased ; but her part in the procession 
was a musing part, and a quiet one. 
Sitting opposite her father in the trav- 
elling-carriage, and recalling the old 
Marshalsea room, her present existence 
was a dream. All that she saw was 
new and wonderful, but it was not real ; 
it seemed to her as if those visions of 
mountains and picturesque countries 
might melt away at any moment, and 
the carriage, turning some abrupt cor- 
ner, bring up with a jolt at the old Mar- 
shalsea gate. 

To have no work to do was strange, 
but not half so strange as having glided 
into a corner where she had no one to 
think for, nothing to plan and contrive, 
no cares of others to load herself with. 
Stranger as that was, it was far stranger 
yet to find a space between herself and 
her father, where others occupied them- 
selves in taking care of him, and where 
she was never expected to be. At first, 
this was so much more unlike her old 
experience than even the mountains 
themselves, that she had been unable 
to resign herself to it, and had tried to 
retain her old place about him. But 
he had spoken to her alone, and had 
said that people — ha — people in an 
exalted position, my dear, must scru- 
pulously exact respect from their de- 
pendants ; and that for her, his daugh- 
ter, Miss Amy Dorrit, of the sole 
remaining branch of the Dorrits of 
Dorsetshire, to be known to — hum — 
to occupy herself in fulfilling the func- 
tions of — ha hum — a valet, would be 
incompatible with that respect. There- 
fore, my dear, he — ha — he laid his 
parental injunctions upon her, to re- 
member that she was a lady, who had 
now to conduct herself with — hum — 
a proper pride, and to preserve the rank 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


269 


of a lady ; and consequently he request- 
ed her to abstain from doing what 
would occasion — ha — unpleasant and 
derogatory remarks. She had obeyed 
without a murmur. Thus it had been 
brought about that she now sat in her 
corner of the luxurious carriage with 
her little patient hands folded before 
her, quite displaced even from the last 
point of the old standing-ground in life 
on which her feet had lingered. 

It was from this position that all she 
saw appeared unreal ; the more sur- 
prising the scenes, the more they re- 
sembled the unreality of her own inner 
life as she went through its vacant places 
all day long. The gorges of the Simp- 
lon, its enormous depths and thunder- 
ing waterfalls, the wonderful road, the 
points of danger where a loose wheel 
or a faltering horse would have been 
destruction, the descent into Italy, the 
opening of that beautiful land, as the 
rugged mountain-chasm widened and 
let them out from a gloomy and dark 
imprisonment, — all a dream, — only the 
old mean Marshalsea a reality. Nay, 
even the old mean Marshalsea was 
shaken to its foundations, when she 
pictured it without her father. She 
could scarcely believe that the prisoners 
were still lingering in the close yard, 
that the mean rooms were still every 
one tenanted, and that the turnkey still 
stood in the lodge letting people in and 
out, all just as she well knew it to be. 

With a remembrance of her father’s 
old life in prison hanging about her 
like the burden of a sorrowful tune, 
Little Dorrit would wake from a dream 
of her birthplace into a whole day’s 
dream. The painted room in which 
she awoke, often a humbled state- 
chamber in a dilapidated palace, would 
begin it ; with its wild red autumnal 
vine-leaves overhanging the glass, its 
orange-trees on the cracked white ter- 
race outside the window, a group of 
monks and peasants in the little street 
below, misery and magnificence wres- 
tling with each other upon every rood 
of ground in the prospect, no matter 
how widely diversified, and misery 
throwing magnificence with the strength 
of fate. To this would succeed a laby- 
rinth of bare passages and pillared gal- 


leries, with the family procession al- 
ready preparing in the quadrangle be- 
low, through the carriages and luggage 
being brought together by the servants 
for the day’s journey. Then breakfast 
in another painted chamber, damp- 
stained and of desolate proportions ; 
and then the departure, which, to her 
timidity and sense of 'not being grand 
enough for her place in the ceremonies, 
was always an uneasy thing. For then 
the courier (who himself would have 
been a foreign gentleman of high mark 
in the Marshalsea) would present himself 
to report that all was ready ; and then 
her father’s valet would pompously 
induct him into his travelling-cloak ; 
and then Fanny’s maid, and her own 
maid (who was a weight on Little Dor- 
rit’s mind, — absolutely made her cry 
at first, she knew so little what to do 
with her), would be in attendance ; and 
then her brother’s man would com- 
plete his master’s equipment ; and then 
her father would g^ve his arm to Mrs. 
General, and her uncle would give his 
to her, and, escorted by the landlord 
and Inn servants, they would swoop 
down stairs. There a crowd would be 
collected to see them enter their car- 
riages, which, amidst much bowing, 
and begging, and prancing, and lash- 
ing, and clattering, they would do ; and 
so they would be driven madly through 
the narrow unsavory streets, and jerked 
out at the town gate. 

Among the day’s unrealities would 
be roads where the bright red vines 
were looped and garlanded together on 
trees for many miles ; woods of olives ; 
white villages and towns on hillsides, 
lovely without, but frightful in their 
dirt and poverty within ; crosses by the 
way ; deep blue lakes with fairy islands, 
and clustering boats with awnings of 
bright colors and sails of beautiful 
forms ; vast piles of building moulder- 
ing to dust ; hanging gardens where 
the weeds had grown so strong that 
their stems, like wedges driven home, 
had split the arch and rent the wall ; 
stone-terraced lanes, with the lizards 
running into and out of every chink ; 
beggars of all sorts everywhere, — pitiful, 
picturesque, hungry, merry, — children 
beggars and aged beggars. Often at 


2JO 


LITTLE DORRIT, 


posting-houses, and other halting- 
places, these miserable creatures would 
appear to her the only realities of the 
day ; and many a time, when the mon- 
ey she had brought to give them was 
all given away, she would sit with her 
folded hands, thoughtfully looking after 
some diminutivn girl leading her gray 
father, as if the sight reminded her 
of something in the days that were 
gone. 

Again, there would be places where 
they stayed the week together, in splen- 
did rooms, had banquets every day, 
rode out among heaps of wonders, 
walked through miles of palaces, and 
rested in dark corners of great churches ; 
where there were winking lamps of gold 
and silver among pillars and arches, 
kneeling figures dotted about at confes- 
sionals and on the pavements ; where 
there was the mist and scent of incense ; 
where there were pictures, fantastic 
images, gaudy altars, great heights and 
distances, all softly lighted through 
stained glass, and the massive curtains 
that hung in the doorways. F rom these 
cities they would go on again, by the 
roads of vines and olives, through 
squalid villages where there was not a 
hovel without a gap in its filthy walls, 
not a window with a whole inch of 
glass or paper ; where there seemed to 
be nothing to support life, nothing to 
eat, nothing to make, nothing to grow, 
nothing to hope, nothing to do but die. 

Again they would come to whole 
towns of palaces, whose proper inmates 
were all banished, and which were all 
changed into barracks ; troops of idle 
soldiers leaning out of the state-win- 
dows, where their accoutrements hung 
drying on the marble architecture, and 
showing to the mind like hosts of rats 
who were (happily) eating away the 
props of the edifices that supported 
them, and must soon, w'ith them, be 
smashed on the heads of the other 
sw'arms of soldiers, and the swarms of 
priests, and the swarms of spies, who 
were all the ill-looking population left 
to be ruined, in the streets below. 

Through such scenes the family pro- 
cession moved on to Venice. And here 
it dispersed for a time, as they were to 
live in Venice, some few mouths, in a 


palace (itself six times as big as the 
whole Marshalsea) on the Grand Canal. 

In this crowning Unreality, where all 
the streets were paved with water, and 
where the death-like stillness of the 
days and nights was broken by no 
sound but the softened ringing of 
church-bells, the rippling of the cur- 
rent, and the cry of the gondoliers 
turning the corners of the flowing 
streets, Little Dorrit, quite lost by her 
task being done, sat down to muse. 
The family began a gay life, went here 
and there, and turned night into day ; 
but she was timid *)f joining in their 
gayeties, and only asked leave to be 
left alone. 

Sometimes she would step into one 
of the gondolas that were always kept 
in waiting, moored to painted posts at 
the door, — when she could escape from 
the attendance of that oppressive maid, 
who was her mistress, and a very hard 
one, — and would be taken all over the 
strange city. Social people in other 
gondolas began to ask each other who 
the little solitary girl was whom they 
passed, sitting in her boat with folded 
hands, looking so pensively and won- 
deringly about her. Never thinking 
that it would be worth anybody’s while 
to notice her or her doings, Little Dor- 
rit, in her quiet, scared, lost manner, 
went about the city none the less. 

But her favorite station was the bal- 
cony of her own room, overhanging the 
canal, with other balconies below, and 
none above. It was of. massive stone 
darkened by ages, built in a wild fancy 
w'hich came from the East to that col- 
lection of wild fancies ; and Little Dor- 
rit w'as little indeed, leaning on the 
broad-cushioned ledge, and looking 
over. As she liked no place of an 
evening half so well, she soon began to 
be w'atched for, and many eyes in pass- 
ing gondolas w'ere raised, and many 
people said, There was the little figure 
of the English girl who w'as always alone. 

Such people were not realities to the 
little figure of the English girl ; such 
people were all unknown to her. She 
would watch the sunset, in its long low 
lines of purple and red, and its burning 
flush high up into the sky, — so glow- 
ing on the buildings, and so. lightening 


LITTLE DORRIT . 


271 


their structure, that it made them look 
as if their strong walls were transpar- 
ent, and they shone from within. She 
would watch those glories expire ; and 
then, after looking at the black gondo- 
las underneath, taking guests to music 
and dancing, would raise her eyes to 
the shining stars. Was there no party 
of her own, in other times, on which 
the stars had shone? To think of that 
old gate now ! 

She would think of that old gate, and 
of herself sitting at it in the dead of 
the night, pillowing Maggy’s head ; and 
of other places and of other scenes asso- 
ciated with those different times. And 
then she would lean upon her balcony, 
and look over at the water, as though 
they all lay underneath it. When she 
got to that, she would musingly watch 
its running, as if, in the general vision, 
it might run dry, and show her the 
prison again, and herself, and the old 
room, and the old inmates, and the old 
visitors : all lasting realities that had 
never changed. 


CHAPTER IV. 

A LETTER FROM LITTLE DORRIT. 

Dear Mr. Clennam : — 

I write to you from my own room 
at Venice, thinking you will be glad to 
hear from me. But I know you cannot 
be so glad to hear from me as I am to 
write to you ; for everything about you 
is as you have been accustomed to see 
it, and you miss nothing, — unless it 
should be me, which can only be for 
a very little while together and very 
seldom, — while everything in my life is 
so strange, and I miss so much. 

When we were in Switzerland, which 
appears to have been years ago, though 
it was only weeks, I met young Mrs. 
Gowan, who was on a mountain excur- 
sion like ourselves. ’She told me she 
was very well and very happy. She 
sent you the message, by me, that she 
thanked you affectionately and would 
never forget you. She was quite confid- 
ing with me, and I loved her almost as 
soon as I spoke to her. But there is 


nothing singular in that ; who could help 
loving so beautiful and winning a crea- 
ture ! I could not wonder at any one 
loving her. No, indeed. 

It will not make you uneasy on Mrs. 
Gowan’s account, I hope, — for I re- 
member that you said you had the inter- 
est of a true friend in her, — if I tell you 
that I wish she could have married 
some one better suited to her. Mr. 
Gowan seems fond of her, and of course 
she is very fond of him, but I thought 
he was not earnest enough, — I don’t 
mean in that respect, — I mean in any- 
thing. I could not keep it out of my 
mind that if I was Mrs. Gowan (what a 
change that would be, and how I must 
alter to become like her ! ) I should feel 
that I was rather lonely and lost, for the 
want of some one who was steadfast and 
firm in purpose. I even thought ‘she 
felt this want a little, almost without 
knowing it. But mind yon are not 
made uneasy by this, for she was “very 
well and very happy.” And she looked 
most beautiful. 

I expect to meet her again before 
long, and indeed have been expecting 
for some days past to see her here. I 
will ever be as good a friend to her as I 
can for your sake. Dear Mr. Clennam, 
I dare say you think little of having 
been a friend to me when I had no 
other (not that I have any other now, 
for I have made no new friends), but 
I think much of it, and I never can for- 
get it. . . 

I wish I knew — but it is best for no 
one to write to me — how Mr. and Mrs. 
Plornish prosper in the business which 
my dear father bought for them, and 
that old Mr. Nandy lives happily with 
them and his two grandchildren, and 
sings all his songs over and over again. 
I cannot quite keep back the tears from 
my eyes when I think of my poor Mag- 
gy, and of the blank she must have felt 
at first, however kind they all are to her, 
without her little mother. Will you 
go and tell her, as a strict secret, with 
my love, that she never can have re- 
gretted our separation more than I have 
regretted it ? And will you tell them all 
that I have thought of them every day, 
and that my heart is faithful to them 
everywhere ? O, if you could know how 


2J2 


LITTLE DORRIT . 


faithful, you would almost pity me fa/'" 
being so far away and being so grand'! 

You will be glad, I am sure, to know 
that my dear father is very well in 
health, and that all these changes are 
highly beneficial to him, and that he is 
very different indeed from what he use4 
to be when you^sed to see him. Thpre 
is an improvenflPk in my uncle too, A 
think, though he never complained of 
old, and never exults now. Fanny" is 
very graceful, quick, and clever. It is 
natural to her to be a lady ; she has 
adapted herself to our new fortunes 
with wonderful ease. 

This reminds me that I have not bFen 
able to do so, and that I sometimesm'f- 
most despair of ever being able to do sp. 

I find that I cannot learn. Mrs. Gen- 
eral is always with us, and we speak 
French and speak Italian, and she takes 
pains to form us in many ways. Whqn 
I say we speak French and Italian,* I 
mean they do. As for me, I am soslpw 
that I scarcely get on at all. As sopA 
as I begin to plan, and think, and try,.* 
all my planning, thinking, and trying go * 
in old directions, and I begin to feel 
careful again about the expenses of the 
day, and about my dear father, and 
about my work, and then I remember 
with a start that there are no such cares 
left, and that in itself is so new and im- 
probable that it sets me wandering 
again. I should not have the courage 
to mention this to any one but you. 

It is the same with all these new 
countries and wonderful sights. They 
are very beautiful, and they astonish 
me, but I am not collected enough — 
not familiar enough with myself, if you 
can quite understand what I mean — 
to have all the pleasure in them that I 
might have. What I knew before them 
blends with them, too, so curiously. 
For instance, when we were among the 
mountains, 1 often felt (I hesitate to tell 
such an idle thing, dear Mr. Clennam, 
even to you) as if the Marshalsea must 
be behind that great rock ; or as if Mrs. 
Clennam ’s room where I have worked 
so many days, and where I first saw 
you, must be just beyond that snow. 
Do you remember one night when I 
came with Maggy to your lodging in 
Covent Garden? That room I have 


often and often fancied I have seen be- 
fore me, travelling along for miles by 
the side of our carriage, when I have 
looked out of the carriage window after 
dark. We were shut out that night, 
and sat at the iron gate, and walked 
about till morning. I often look up at 
the stars, even from the balcony of this 
room, and believe that I am in the 
street again, shut out with Maggy. It 
v is the same with people that 1 left in 
England. 

When I go about here in a gondola, I 
surprise myselt looking into other gon- 
dolas as if I hoped to see them. It 
would overcome me with joy to see 
them, but I don’t think it would sur- 
prise me much, at first. In my fanciful 
times, I fancy that they might be any- 
where ; and I almost expect to see their 
dear faces on the bridges or the quays. 

Another difficulty that I have will 
seem very strange to you. It must 
seem very strange to any one but me, 
and does even to me : I often feel the 
old sad pity for — I need not write the 
word — for him. Changed as he is, 
and inexpressibly blest and thankful as 
I always am to know it, the old sorrow- 
ful feeling of compassion comes upon 
me sometimes with such strength that 
I want to put my arms round his neck, 
tell him how I love him, and cry a little 
on his breast. I should be glad after 
that, and proud and happy. But I 
know that I must not do this ; that he 
would not like it, that Fanny would be 
angry, that Mrs. General would be 
amazed ; and so I quiet myself. Yet in 
doing so, I struggle with the feeling 
that I have come to be at a distance 
from him ; and that even in the midst of 
all the servants and attendants, he is 
deserted, and in want of me. 

Dear Mr. Clennam, I have written 
a great deal about myself, but I must 
write a little more still, or what I 
wanted most of all to say in this weak 
letter would be left out of it. In all 
these foolish thoughts of mine, which 
I have been so hardy as to confess to 
you because I know you will understand 
me if anybody can, and will make more 
allowance for me than anybody else 
would if you cannot, — in all these 
thoughts, there is one thought scarcely 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


273 


ever ; — never — out of my memory, 
and that is that I hope you sometimes, 
in a quiet moment, have a thought for 
me. I must tell you that as to this, 
I have felt, ever since I have been 
away, an anxiety which I am very, 
very anxious to relieve. I have been 
afraid that you may think of me in a 
new light, or a new character. Don’t 
do that, I could not bear that, — it 
would make me more unhappy than 
you can suppose. It would break my 
heart to believe that you thought of 
me in any way that would make me 
stranger to you than I was when you 
were so good to me. What I have to 
pray and entreat of you is, that you 
will never think of me as the daughter 
of a rich person ; that you will never 
think of me as dressing any better, or 
living any better, than when you first 
knew me. That you will remember 
me only as the little shabby girl you 
protected with so much tenderness, 
from whose threadbare dress you have 
kept away the rain, and whose wet 
feet you have dried at your fire. That 
you will think of me (when you think 
of me at all), and of my true affection 
and devoted gratitude, always without 
change, as of 

Your poor child, 

Little Dorrit. 

P.S. — Particularly remember that 
you are not to be uneasy about Mrs. 
Gowan. Her w ords were, “ Very well 
and very happy.” And she looked 
most beautiful. 


CHAPTER V. 

SOMETHING WRONG SOMEWHERE. 

The family had been a- month or 
two at Venice, when Mr. Dorrit, who 
was much among Counts and Mar- 
quises, and had but scant leisure, set an 
hour of one day apart, beforehand, for 
th* purpose of holding some confer- 
ence with Mrs. General. 

The time he had reserved in his 
mind arriving, he sent Mr. Tinkler, 
his valet, to Mrs. General’s apartment 
(which would have absorbed about a 

xS 


third of the area of the Marshalsea), 
to present his compliments to that 
ladj', and represent him as desiring the 
favor of an interview'. It being that 
period of the forenoon when the vari- 
ous members of the family had coffee 
in their own chambers, some couple 
of hours before assembifcig at breakfast 
in a faded hall whiclvliad once been 
sumptuous, but was now the prey of 
watery vapors and a settled melancholy, 
Mrs. General was accessible to the 
valet. That envoy found her on a 
little square of carpet, so extremely 
diminutive in reference to the size of 
her stone and marble floor, that she 
looked as if she might have had it 
spread for the trying on of a ready- 
made pair of shoes ; or as if she had 
come into possession of the enchanted 
iece of carpet, bought for forty purses 
y one of the three princes in the 
Arabian Nights, and had that mo- 
ment been transported on it, at a wish, 
into a palatial saloon with which it had 
no connection. 

Mrs. General, replying to the envoy, 
as she set down her empty coffee-cup 
that she was willing at once to proceed 
to Mr. Dorrit’s apartment, and spare 
him the trouble of coming to her 
(which, in his gallantry, he had pro- 
posed), the envoy threw open the door, 
and escorted Mrs. General to the pres- 
ence. It was quite a walk, by myste- 
rious staircases and corridors, from 
Mrs. General’s apartment — hood- 
winked by a narrow side street with a 
low gloomy bridge in it, and dungeon- 
like opposite tenements, their walls 
besmeared with a thousand downward 
stains and streaks, as if every crazy 
aperture in them had been weeping 
tears of rust into the Adriatic for cen- 
turies — to Mr. Dorrit’s apartment : 
with a w’hole English house-front of 
window, a prospect of beautiful church- 
domes rising into the blue sky sheer 
out of the water which reflected them, 
and a hushed murmur of the Grand 
Canal laving the doorways below, 
where his gondolas and gondoliers 
attended his pleasure, drowsily swing- 
ing in a little forest of piles. 

Mr. Dorrit, in a resplendent dressing- 
gown and cap, — the dormant grub that 


274 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


had so long bided its time among the 
collegians had burst into a rare butter- 
fly, — rose to receive Mrs. General. A 
chair to Mrs. General. An easier chair, 
sir ; what are you doing, what are you 
about, what do you mean ? Now leave 
us ! 

“ Mrs. Genftal,” said Mr. Dorrit, 
“ I took the liberty — ” 

“ By no means,” Mrs. General inter- 
posed. “ I was quite at your disposi- 
tion. I had had my coffee. ” 

“ I took the liberty,” said Mr. Dorrit, 
again, with the magnificent placidity of 
one who was above correction, “ to 
solicit the favor of a little private con- 
versation with you, because I feel 
rather worried respecting my — ha — 
my younger daughter. You will have 
observed a great difference of tempera- 
ment, madam, between my two daugh- 
ters ? ” 

Said Mrs. General in response, cross- 
ing her gloved hands (she was never 
without gloves, and they never creased 
and always fitted), “ There is a great 
difference.” 

“ May I ask to be favored with your 
view' of it ? ” said Mr. Dorrit, with a 
deference not incompatible with majes- 
tic serenity. 

“ Fanny,” returned Mrs. General, 
“ has force of character and self-reli- 
ance. Amy, none.” 

None? O Mrs. General, ask the 
Marshalsea stones and bars. O Mrs. 
General, ask the milliner who taught 
her to w'ork, and the dancing-master who 
taught her sister to dance. O Mrs. Gen- 
eral, Mrs. General, ask me, her father, 
what I owe to her ; and hear my testi- 
mony touching the life of this slighted 
little creature from her childhood up ! 

No such adjuration entered Mr. Dor- 
rit’s head. He looked at Mrs. General, 
seated in her usual erect attitude on 
her coach-box behind the proprieties, 
and he said in a thoughtful manner, 
“ True, madam.” 

“ I would not,” said Mrs. General, 
“ be understood to say, observe, that 
there is nothing to improve in Fanny. 
But there is material there, — perhaps, 
indeed, a little too much.” 

“ Will you be kind enough, madam,” 
said Mr. Dorrit, “to be — ha — more 


j explicit ? I do not quite understand 
my elder daughter’s having — hum — 
too much material. What material ? ” 
“Fanny,” returned Mrs. General, 
“ at present forms too many opinions. 
Perfect breeding forms none, and is 
never demonstrative.” 

Lest he himself should be found de- 
ficient in perfect breeding, Mr. Dorrit 
hastened to reply, “ Unquestionably, 
madam, you are right.” Mrs. General 
returned in her emotionless and ex- 
pressionless manner, “ I believe so.” 

“But you are aware, my dear mad- 
am,” said Mr. Dorrit, “that my daugh- 
ters had the misfortune to lose their 
lamented mother when they w'ere very 
young ; and that, in consequence of 
my not having been until lately the 
recognized heir to my property, they 
have lived with me as a comparatively 
poor, though always proud, gentleman, 
in — ha hum — retirement ! ” 

“ I do not,” said Mrs. General, “ lose 
sight of the circumstance.” 

“ Madam,” pursued Mr. Dorrit, “of 
my daughter Fanny, under her present 
guidance and with such an example 
constantly before her — ” 

(Mrs. General shut her eyes.) 

“ — I have no misgivings. There is 
adaptability of character in Fanny. 
But my younger daughter, Mrs. Gen- 
eral, rather w'orries and vexes my 
thoughts. I must inform you that she 
has always been my favorite.” 

“ There is no accounting,” said Mrs. 
General, “ for these partialities.” 

“Ha — no,” assented Mr. Dorrit. 
“ No. Now, madam, I am troubled 
by noticing that Amy is not, «o to speak, 
one of ourselves. She does not care 
to go about with us ; she is lo in the 
society we have here; our tastes are 
evidently not her tastes. Which,” said 
Mr. Dorrit, summing up ^’ifh judicial 
gravity, “ is to say, in otheh,vvords. that 
there is something wrong-, in — ha — 
Amy.” 

“ May we incline to the supposition,” 
said Mrs. General, with a little touch of 
varnish, “ that something is referable 
to the novelty of the position ? ” 

“ Excuse me, madam,” observed Mr. 
Dorrit, rather quickly. “ The daughter 
oi a gentleman, though — ha — himself 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


275 


at one time comparatively far from 
affluent — comparatively — and herself 
-reared in — hum — retirement, need not 
of necessity find this position so very 
novel.” 

“True,” said Mrs. General, — “true.” 

“Therefore, madam,” said Mr. Dor- 
rit, “ I took the liberty” (he laid an 
emphasis on the phrase and repeated 
it, as though he stipulated, with urbane 
firmness, that he must not be contra- 
dicted again), — “I took the liberty of 
requesting this interview, in order that I 
might mention the topic to you, and in- 
quire how you would advise me? ” 

“ Mr. Dorrit,” returned Mrs. Gen- 
eral, “I have conversed with Amy sev- 
eral times since we have been residing 
here on the general subject of the for- 
mation of a demeanor. She has ex- 
pressed herself to me as wondering ex- 
ceedingly at Venice. I have mentioned 
to her that it is better not to wonder. 
I have pointed out to her that the cele- 
brated Mr. Eustace, the classical tour- 
ist, did not think much of it ; and that 
he compared the Rialto, greatly to its 
disadvantage, with Westminster and 
Blackfriars Bridges. I need not add, 
after what you have said, that I have 
not yet found my arguments successful. 
You do me the honor to ask me what I 
advise. It always appears to me (if this 
should prove to be a baseless assump- 
tion, I shall be pardoned), that Mr. 
Dorrit has been accustomed to exercise 
influence over the minds of others.” 

“Hum — madam,” said Mr. Dorrit, 
“ I have been at the head of — ha — of 
a considerable community. You are 
right in supposing that I am not unac- 
customed to-r-an influential position.” 

“ I a.tfltappy,” returned Mrs. Gener- 
al, “to be so corroborated. I would 
therefore the more confidently recom- 
mend, tha + 'dr. Dorrit should speak to 
Amy h it, and make his observa- 
tions and wishes known to her. Being 
his favorite besides, and no doubt at- 
tached to him, she is all the more like- 
ly to yield to his influence.” 

“ I had anticipated your suggestion, 
madam,” said Mr. Dorrit, “but — ha — 
was not sure that I might — hum — not 
encroach on — ” 

“On my province, Mr. Dorrit?” 


said Mrs. General, graciously. “Do 
not mention it.” 

“Then with your leave, madam,” 
resumed Mr. Dorrit, ringing his little 
bell to summon his valet, “I will send 
for her at once.” 

“ Does Mr. Dorrit wish me to re- 
main?” 

“Perhaps, if you have no other en- 
gagement, you would not object for a 
minute or two — ” 

“ Not at all.” 

So Tinkler the valet vcas instructed 
to find Miss Amy’s maid, and to request 
that subordinate to inform Miss Amy 
that Mr. Dorrit wished to see her in 
his own room. In delivering this 
charge to Tinkler, Mr. Dorrit looked 
severely at him, and also kept a jealous 
eye upon him until he went out at the 
door, mistrusting that he might have 
something in his mind prejudicial to the 
family dignity ; that he might have 
even got wind of some collegiate joke 
before he came into the service, and 
might be derisively reviving its remem- 
brance at the present moment. If 
Tinkler had happened to smile, howev- 
er faintly and innocently, nothing would 
have persuaded Mr. Dorrit, to the hour 
of his death, but that this was the case. 
As Tinkler happened, however, very 
fortunately for himself, to be of a seri- 
ous and composed countenance, he es- 
caped the secret danger that threatened 
him. And as on his return, — when 
Mr. Dorrit eyed him again, — he an- 
nounced Miss Amy as if she had come 
to a funeral, he left a vague impression 
on Mr. Dorrit’s mind that he was a 
well-conducted young fellow, who had 
been brought up in the study of his 
Catechism by a widowed mother. 

“ Amy,” said Mr. Dorrit, “you have 
just now been the subject of some con- 
versation between myself and Mrs. 
General. We agree that you scarcely 
seem at home here. Ha — how is 
this?” 

A pause. 

“ I think, father, I require a little 
time.” 

“ Papa is a preferable mode of ad- 
dress,” observed Mrs. General. “ Fa- 
ther is rather vulgar, my dear. The 
word Papa, besides, gives a pretty form 


276 


LITTLE D0RR1T. 


to the lips. Papa, potatoes, poultry, 
prunes, and prism, are all very good 
words for the lips ; especially prunes 
and prism. You will find it serviceable 
in the formation of a demeanor, if you 
sometimes say to yourself in company, 

— on entering a room, for instance, — 
Papa, potatoes^ poultry, prunes, and 
prism, prunes and prism.” 

“ Pray, my child,” said Mr. Dorrit, 
“attend to the — hum — precepts of 
Mrs. General.” 

Poor Little Dorrit, with a rather for- 
lorn glance at that eminent varnisher, 
promised to try. 

“You say, Amy,” pursued Mr. Dor- 
rit, “ that you think you require time. 
Time for what ?” 

Another pause. 

“ To become accustomed to the nov- 
elty of my life, was all I meant,” said 
Little Dorrit, with her loving eyes upon 
her father ; whom she had very nearly 
addressed as poultry, if not prunes and 
prism too, in her desire to submit her- 
self to Mrs. General and please him. 

Mr. Dorrit frowned, and looked any- 
thing but pleased. “ Amy,” he returned, 
“ it appears to me, I must say, that you 
have had abundance of time for that. 
Ha — you surprise me. You disap- 
point me. Fanny has conquered any 
such little difficulties, and — hum — why 
not you ? ” 

“ I hope I shall do better soon,” said 
Little Dorrit. 

“ I hope so,” returned her father. 
“I — ha — I most devoutly hope so, 
Amy. I sent for you, in order that I 
might say — hum — impressively say, 
in the presence of Mrs. General, to 
whom we are all so much indebted for 
obligingly being present among us, on 

— ha — on this or any other occasion,” 
Mrs. General shut her eyes, “ that I — 
ha hum — am not pleased with you. 
You make Mrs. General’s a thankless 
task. You — ha — embarrass me very 
much. You have always (as I have in- 
formed Mrs. General) been my favorite 
child ; I have always made you a — 
hum — a friend and companion ; in re- 
turn, I beg — I — ha — I do beg, that 
you accommodate yourself better to — 
hum — circumstances, and dutifully do 
what becomes your — your station.” 


Mr. Dorrit was even a little more 
fragmentary than usual ; being excited 
on the subject, and anxious to make 
himself particularly emphatic. 

“ I do beg,” he repeated, “ that this 
may be attended to, and that you will 
seriously take pains and try to conduct 
yourself in a manner both becoming 
vour position as — ha — Miss Amy 
Dorrit, and satisfactory to myself and 
Mrs. General.” 

That lady shut her eyes again, on 
being again referred to ; then, slowly 
opening them and rising, added these 
words : — 

“ If Miss Amy Dorrit will direct her 
own attention to, and will accept of my 
poor assistance in, the formation of a 
surface, Mr. Dorrit will have no further 
cause of anxiety. May I take this op- 
portunity of remarking, as an instance 
in point, that it is scarcely delicate to 
look at vagrants with the attention 
which I have seen bestowed upon them 
by a very dear young friend of mine ? 
They should not be looked at. Nothing 
disagreeable should ever be looked at. 
Apart from such a habit standing in the 
way of that graceful equanimity of surface 
which is so expressive of good breeding, 
it hardly seems compatible with refine- 
ment of mind. A truly refined mind 
will seem to be ignorant of the existence 
of anything that is not perfectly proper, 
placid, and pleasant.” Having deliv- 
ered this exalted sentiment, Mrs. Gen- 
eral made a sweeping obeisance, and 
retired with an expression of mouth in- 
dicative of Prunes and Prism. 

Little Dorrit, whether speaking or 
silent, had preserved her quiet earnest- 
ness and her loving look. It had not 
been clouded, except for a passing mo- 
ment, until now. But now that she was 
left alone with him, the fingers of her 
lightly folded hands were agitated, and 
there was repressed emotion in her 
face. 

Not for herself. She might feel a 
little wounded, but her care was not for 
herself. Her thoughts still turned, as 
they always had turned, to him. A 
faint misgiving, which had hung about 
her since their accession to fortune, that 
even now she could never see him as 
he used to be before the prison days, 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


277 


had gradually begun to assume form in 
her mind. She felt, that, in what he 
had just now said to her, and in his 
whole bearing towards her, there was 
the well-known shadow of the Marshal- 
sea wall. It took a new shape, but it 
was the old sad shadow. She began 
with sorrowful unwillingness to ac- 
knowledge to herself, that she was not 
strong enough to keep off the fear that 
no space in the life of man could over- 
come that quarter of a century behind 
the prison bars. She had no blame 
to bestow upon him, therefore, nothing 
to reproach him with, no emotions in 
her faithful heart but great compassion 
and unbounded tenderness. 

This is why it was, that, even as he 
sat before her on his sofa, in the bril- 
liant light of a bright Italian day, the 
wonderful city without and the splen- 
dors of an old palace within, she saw 
him at the moment in the long-familiar 
gloom of his Marshalsea lodging, and 
wished to take her seat beside him, and 
comfort him, and be again full of con- 
fidence with him, and of usefulness to 
him. If he divined what was in her 
thoughts, his ow.n were not in tune 
w'ith it. After some uneasy moving in 
his seat, he got up, and walked about, 
looking very much dissatisfied. 

“Is there anything else you wish to 
say to me, dear father? ” 

“No, no. Nothing else.” 

“ I am sorry you have not been 
pleased with me, dear. I hope you 
will not think of me with displeasure 
now. I am going to try, more than 
ever, to adapt myself, as you wish, to 
what surrounds me, — for indeed I 
have tried all along, though I have 
failed, I know.” 

“Amy,” he returned, turning short 
upon her. “You — ha — habitually 
hurt me.” 

“ Hurt you, father ! I!” 

“There is a — hum — a topic,” said 
Mr. Dorrit, looking all about the ceil- 
ing of the room, and never at the atten- 
tive, uncomplainingly shocked face, — 

“ a painful topic, a series of events which 
I wish — ha — altogether to obliterate. 
This is understood by your sister, who 
has already remonstrated with you in 
my presence ; it is understood by your I 


brother; it is understood by — ha hum 

— by every one of delicacy and sensi- 
tiveness, except yourself — ha — I ain 
sorry to say, except yourself. You, 
Amy — hum — you alone and only you 

— constantly revive the topic, though 
not in words.” 

She laid her hand on his arm. She 
did nothing more. She gently touched 
him. The trembling hand may have 
said, with some expression, “Think of 
me, think how I have worked, think of 
my many cares ! ” But she said not a 
syllable herself. 

There was a reproach in the touch so- 
addressed to him that she had not fore- 
seen, or she would have withheld her 
hand. He began to justify himself, in 
a heated, stumbling, angry manner, 
which made nothing of it. 

“ I was there all those years. I was 

— ha — universally acknowledged as the 
head of the place. 1 — hum — I caused 
you to be respected there, Amy. I — 
ha hum — I gave my family a position 
there. I deserve a return. I claim a 
return. I say, sweep it off the face of 
the earth and begin afresh. Is that 
much? I ask, is that much?” 

He did not once look at her, as he 
rambled on in this way ; but gesticu- 
lated at, and appealed to, the empty air. 

“ I have suffered. Probably I know 
how much I have suffered, better than 
any one — ha — I say than any one! 
If I can put that aside, if / can erad- 
icate the marks of what I have endured, 
and can emerge before the world a — 
ha — gentleman unspoiled, unspotted — 
is it a great deal to expect — I say 
again, islt a great deal to expect — that 
my children should — hum — do the 
same, and sweep that accursed experi- 
ence off the face of the earth ! ” 

In spite of his flustered state, he 
made all these exclamations ir. a care- 
fully suppressed voice, lest the valet 
should overhear anything. 

“ Accordingly, they do it. Your sis- 
ter does it. Your brother does it. You 
alone, my favorite child, whom I made 
the friend and companion of my life 
when you were a mere — hum — Baby, 
do not do it. You alone say you can’t 
do it. I provide you with valuable 
assistance to do it. I attach an accom- 


2 7 S 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


plished and highly bred lady — ha — 
Mrs. General, to you, for the purpose 
of doing it. Is it surprising that I 
should be displeased? Is it necessary 
that I should defend myself for express- 
ing my displeasure ? No!” 

Notwithstanding which, he continued 
to defend himself, without any abate- 
ment of his flushed mood. 

“ I am careful to appeal to that lady 
for confirmation, before I express any 
displeasure at all. I — hum — 1 neces- 
sarily make that appeal within limited 
bounds, or I — ha — should render legi- 
ble, by that lady, what I desire to be 
blotted out. Am I selfish? Do I com- 
plain for my own sake? No. No. 
Principally for — ha hum — your sake, 
Amy.” 

This last consideration plainly ap- 
peared, from his manner of pursuing it, 
to have just that instant come into his 
head. 

“ I said I was hurt. So I am. So 
I — ha — am determined to be, what- 
ever is advanced to the contrary. I am 
hurt, that my daughter, seated in the 

— hum — lap of fortune, should mope 
and retire, and proclaim herself unequal 
to her destiny. I am hurt that she 
should — ha — systematically reproduce 
what the rest of us blot out ; and seem 

— hum — I had almost said positively 
anxioys — to announce to wealthy and 
distinguished society, that she was born 
and bred in — ha hum — a place that I, 
myself, decline to name. But there is 
no inconsistency — ha — not the least, 
in my feeling hurt, and yet complaining 
principally for your sake, Amy. I do; 
I say again, I do. It is for your sake, 
that I wish you, under the auspices of 
Mrs. General, to form a — hum — a sur- 
face. It is for your sake, that I wish 
you to have a — ha — truly refined 
mind, and (in the striking words of 
Mrs. General) to be ignorant of every- 
thing that is not perfectly proper, 
placid, and pleasant.” 

He had been running down by jerks, 
during his last speech, like a sort of ill- 
adjusted alarum. The touch was still 
upon his arm. He fell silent ; and after 
looking about the ceiling again, for a 
little while, looked down at her. Her 
head drooped, and he could not see her 


face ; but her touch was tender and 
quiet, and in the expression of her de- 
jected figure there was no blame, — 
nothing but love. He began to whim- 
per, just as he had done that night in 
the prison w'hen she afterwards sat at 
his bedside till morning ; exclaimed 
that he was a poor ruin and a poor 
wretch in the midst of his wealth ; and 
clasped her in his arms. “ Hush, hush, 
my own dear ! Kiss me ! ” was all she 
said to him. His tears were soon dried, 
much sooner than on the former occa- 
sion ; and he was presently afterwards 
very high with his valet, as a way of 
righting himself for having shed any. 

With one remarkable exception, to 
be recorded in its place, this was the 
only time, in his life of freedom and 
fortune, when he spoke to his daugh- 
ter Amy of the old days. 

But now the breakfast hour arrived; 
and with it Miss Fanny from her apart- 
ment, and Mr. Edward from his apart- 
ment. Both these young persons of 
distinction were something the worse 
for late hours. As to Miss Fanny, she 
had become the victim of an insatiate 
mania for w'hat she called “ going into 
society ” ; and would have gone into it 
headforemost fifty times between sun- 
set and sunrise, if so many opportuni- 
ties had been at her disposal. As to 
Mr. Edward, he, too, had a large ac- 
quaintance, and was generally engaged 
(for the most part, in dicing circles, or 
others of a kindred nature), during the 
greater part of every night. For this 
gentleman, when his fortunes changed, 
had stood at the great advantage of 
being already prepared for the highest 
associates, and having little to learn : 
so much was he indebted to the happy 
accidents which had made him ac- 
quainted with horse-dealing and bil- 
liard-marking. 

At breakfast, Mr. Frederick Dorrit 
likewise appeared. As the old gentle- 
man inhabited the highest story of the 
palace, where he might have practised 
pistol-shooting without much chance of 
discovery by the other inmates, his 
younger niece had taken courage to 
propose the restoration to him of his 
clarionet ; which Mr. Dorrit had or- 
dered to be confiscated, but which she 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


279 


had ventured to preserve. Notwith- 1 
standing some objections from Miss 
Fanny, that it was a low instrument, 
and that she detested the sound of it, 
the concession had been made. But it 
was then discovered that he had had 
enough of it, and never played it, now 
that it was no longer his means of get- 
ting bread. He had insensibly acquired 
a new habit of shuffling into the pic- 
ture-galleries, always with his twisted 
paper of snuff in his hand (much to 
the indignation of Miss Fanny, who 
had proposed the purchase of a gold 
box for him that the family might not 
be discredited, which he had absolutely 
refused to carry when it was bought) ; 
and of passing hours and hours before 
the portraits of renowned Venetians. 

It was never made out what his dazed 
eyes saw in them, — whether he had an 
interest in them merely as pictures, or 
whether he confusedly identified them 
with a glory that was departed, like the 
strength of his own mind. But he 
paid his court to them w'ith great exact- 
ness, and clearly derived pleasure from 
the pursuit. After the first few days, 
Little Dorrit happened one morning to 
assist at these attentions. It so evi- 
dently heightened his gratification, that 
she often accompanied him afterwards, 
and the greatest delight of which the 
old man had shown himself susceptible 
since his ruin arose out of these ex- 
cursions, when he would carry a chair 
about for her from picture to picture, 
and stand behind it, in spite of all her 
remonstrances, silently presenting her 
to the noble Venetians. 

It fell out that at this family break- 
fast he referred to their having seen in 
a gallery, on the previous day, the lady 
and gentleman whom they had encoun- 
tered on the Great Saint Bernard. ‘ ' I 
forget the name,” said he. “ I dare 
say you remember them, William ? I 
dare say you do, Edward? ” 

“/ remember ’em well enough,” said 
the latter. 

“ I should think so,” observed Miss 
Fanny, with a toss of her head, and a 
glance at her sister. “ But they w'ould 
not have been recalled to our remem- 
brance, I suspect, if uncle hadn’t tum- 
bled over the subject.” 


“ My dear, what a curious phrase,” 
said Mrs. General. “ Would not in- 
advertently lighted upon, or acciden- 
tally referred to, be better? ” 

“ Thank you very much, Mrs. Gen- 
eral,” returned the young lady ; “ no, I 
think not. On the whole, I prefer my 
own expression.” 

This was always Miss Fanny’s way of 
receiving a suggestion from Mrs. Gen- 
eral. But she alw'avs stored it up in 
her mind, and adopted it at another 
time. 

“ I should have mentioned our hav- 
ing met Mr. and Mrs. Gow-an, Fanny,” 
said Little Dorrit, “ even if uncle had 
not. I have scarcely seen you since, 
you know. I meant to have spoken of 
it at breakfast ; because I should like to 
pay a visit to Mrs. Gow'an, and to be- 
come better acquainted with her, if 
papa and Mrs. General do not object.” 

“Well, Amy,” said Fanny, “I am 
sure I am glad to find you, at last, ex- 
pressing a w'ish to become better 
acquainted w'ith anybody in Venice. 
Though w'hether Mr. and Mrs. Gow'an 
are desirable acquaintances remains to 
be determined.” 

“ Mrs. Gowan I spoke of, dear.” 

“ No doubt,” said Fanny. “ But 
you can’t separate her from her hus- 
band, I believe, without an act of Par- 
liament.” 

“Do you think, papa,” inquired Little 
Dorrit, with diffidence and hesitation, 
“there is any objection to my making 
this visit ? ” 

“ Really,” he replied, _ “I — ha — 
what is Mrs. General’s view?” 

Mrs. General’s view was, that, not 
having the honor of any acquaintance 
with the lady and gentleman referred 
to, she was not in a position to varnish 
the present article. She could only re- 
mark, as a general principle observed 
in the varnishing trade, that much de- 
pended on the quarter from w'hich the 
lady under consideration was accredited, 
to a family so conspicuously niched in 
the social temple as the family of Dor- 
rit. 

At this remark the face of Mr. Dor- 
rit gloomed considerably. He was 
about (connecting the accrediting w ith 
I an obtrusive person of the name of 


LITTLE D ORE IT. 


280 

Clennam, whom he imperfectly remem- 
bered in some former state of existence) 
to blackball the name of Gowan finally, 
when Edward Dorrit, Esquire, came 
into the conversation, with his glass in 
his eye, and the preliminary remark of, 
“ 1 say — you there ! Go out, will 
you ! ” Which was addressed to a 
couple of men who were handing the 
dishes round, as a courteous intimation 
that their services could be temporarily 
dispensed with. 

Those menials having obeyed the 
mandate, Edward Dorrit, Esquire, pro- 
ceeded. 

“ Perhaps it ’s a matter of policy to 
let you all know that these Gowans — 
in whose favor, or at least the gentle- 
man’s, I can’t be supposed to be much 
prepossessed myself — are known to 
people of importance if that makes any 
difference.” 

“That, I would say,” observed the 
fair varnisher, “ makes the greatest dif- 
ference. The connection in question, 
being really people of importance and 
consideration — ” 

“ As to that,” said Edward Dorrit, 
Esquire, “ I ’ll give you the means of 
judging for yourself. You are acquaint- 
ed, perhaps, with the famous name of 
Merdle ? ” 

“ The great Merdle ! ” exclaimed Mrs. 
General. 

“ The Merdle,” said Edward Dorrit, 
Esquire. “ They are known to him. 
Mrs. Gowan — I mean the dowager, 
my polite friend’s mother — is intimate 
with Mrs. Merdle, and I know these 
two to be on their visiting-list.” 

“ If so, a more undeniable guaranty 
could not be given,” said Mrs. General 
to Mr. Dorrit, raising her gloves and 
bowing her head, as if she were doing 
homage to some visible graven image. 

“ I beg to ask my son, from motives 
of — ha — curiosity,” Mr. Dorrit ob- 
served, with a decided change in his 
manner, “ how he becomes possessed of 
this — hum — timely information ? ” 

“ It ’s not a long story, sir,” returned 
Edward Dorrit, Esquire, “and you 
shall have it out of hand. To begin 
with, Mrs. Merdle is the lady you had 
the parley with, at what’s - his - name 
place.” 


“Martigny,” interposed Miss Fanny, 
with an air of infinite languor. 

“ Martigny,” assented her brother, 
with a slight nod and a slight wink ; in 
acknowledgment of which Miss Fan- 
ny looked surprised, and laughed and 
reddened. 

“ How can that be, Edward ? ” said 
Mr. Dorrit. “ You informed me that 
the name of the gentleman with whom 
you conferred was — ha — Sparkler. In- 
deed, you showed me his card. Hum. 
Sparkler.” 

“ No doubt of it, father ; but it does n’t 
follow that his mother’s name must be 
the same. Mrs. Merdle was married 
before, and he is her son. She is in 
Rome now ; where probably we shall 
know more of her, as you decide to 
winter there. Sparkler is just come 
here. I passed last evening in company 
with Sparkler. Sparkler is a very good 
fellow on the whole, though rather a 
bore on one subject, in consequence of 
being tremendously smitten with a cer- 
tain young lady.” Here Edward Dor- 
rit, Esquire, eyed Miss Fanny through 
his glass across the table. “We hap- 
pened last night to compare notes about 
our travels, and I had the information I 
have given you from Sparkler himself.” 
Here he ceased ; continuing to eye Miss 
Fanny through his glass, with a face 
much twisted, and not ornamentally so, 
in part by the action of keeping his 
glass in his eye, and in part by the great 
subtlety of his smile. 

“ Under these circumstances,” said 
Mr. Dorrit, “ I believe I express the 
sentiments of — ha — Mrs. General, no 
less than my own, when I say that there 
is no objection, but — ha hum — quite 
the contrary — to your gratifying your 
desire, Amy. I trust I may ha — hail 
— this desire,” said Mr. Dorrit, in an 
encouraging and forgiving manner, “ as 
an auspicious omen. It is quite right 
to know these people. It is a very 
proper thing. Mr. Merdle’s is a name 
of — ha — world-wide repute. Mr. Mer- 
dle’s undertakings are immense. They 
bring him in such vast sums of money, 
that they are regarded as — hum — na- 
tional benefits. Mr. Merdle is the man 
of this time. The name of Merdle is 
the name of the age. Pray do every- 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


thing on my behalf that is civil to Mr. 
and Mrs. Gowan, for we will — ha — w'e 
will certainly notice them.” 

This magnificent accordance of Mr. 
Dorrit’s recognition settled the matter. 
It was not observed that uncle had 
pushed away his plate, and forgotten his 
breakfast ; but he was not much ob- 
served at any time, except by Little Dor- 
rit. The servants were recalled, and 
the meal proceeded to its conclusion. 
Mrs. General rose and left the table. 
Little Dorrit rose and left the table. 
When Edward and Fanny remained 
whispering together across it, and when 
Mr. Dorrit remained eating figs and 
reading a French newspaper, uncle 
suddenly fixed the attention of all three, 
by rising out of his chair, striking his 
hand upon the table, and saying, 
“ Brother ! I protest against it ! ” 

If he had made a proclamation in an 
unknown tongue, and given up the 
ghost immediately afterwards, he could 
not have astounded his audience more. 
The paper fell from Mr. Dorrit’s hand, 
and he sat petrified, with a fig half-way 
to his mouth. 

“ Brother!” said the old man, con- 
veying a surprising energy into his 
trembling voice, “ I protest against it ! 
1 love you ; you know I love you dearly. 
In these many years, I have never been 
untrue to you in a single thought. Weak 
as I am, I would at any time have 
struck any man w>ho spoke ill of you. 
But, brother, brother, brother, I pro- 
test against it ! ” 

It was extraordinary to see of wdiat a 
burst of earnestness such a decrepit man 
was capable. His eyes became bright, 
his gray hair rose on his head, markings 
of purpose on his brow and face which 
had faded from them for five-and-twenty 
years started out again, and there was 
an energy in his hand that made its ac- 
tion nervous once more. 

“My dear Frederick!” exclaimed 
Mr. Dorrit, faintly. “ What is wrong? 
What is the matter ? ” 

“ How dare you,” said the old man, 
turning round on Fanny, — “ how dare 
vou do it? Have you no. memory? 
idave you no heart?” 

“Uncle?” cried Fanny, affrighted 
and bursting into tears, “ why do you 


281 

attack me in this cruel manner? What 
have I done ? ” 

“Done?” returned the old man, 
pointing to her sister’s place, “ where ’s 
your affectionate, invaluable friend ? 
Where ’s your devoted guardian ? 
Where ’s your more than mother? How 
dare you set up superiorities against all 
these characters combined in your sis- 
ter? For shame, you false girl, for 
shame ! ” 

“ 1 love Amy,” cried Miss Fanny, 
sobbing and weeping, “ as well as I 
love my life, — better than I love my 
life. I don’t deserve to be so treated. 
I am as grateful to Amy, and as fond of 
Amy, as it ’s possible for any human be- 
ing to be. I wish I was dead. I never 
was so wickedly wronged. And only be- 
cause I am anxious for the family credit.” 

“ To the w'inds with the family cred- 
it ! ” cried the old man, w'ith great 
scorn and indignation. “ Brother, I 
protest against pride. I protest against 
ingratitude. I protest against any one of 
us here who have known what w'e have 
known, and have seen what we have 
seen, setting up any pretension that 
puts Amy at a moment’s disadvantage, 
or to the cost of a moment’s pain. We 
may know that it ’s a base pretension 
by its having that effect. It ought to 
bring a judgment on us. Brother, I 
protest against it in the sight of God ! ” 

As his hand went up above his head 
and came down on the table, it might 
have been a blacksmith’s. After a few 
moments’ silence, it had relaxed into its 
usual weak condition. He went round 
to his brother with his ordinary shuffling 
step, put the hand on his shoulder, and 
said, in a softened voice, “ William, my 
dear, I felt obliged to say it ; forgive me, 
for I felt obliged to say it ! ” and then 
went, in his bowed way, out of the pal- 
ace hall, just as he might have gone out 
of the Marshalsea room. 

All this time Fanny had been sobbing 
and crying, and still continued to do so. 
Edward, beyond opening his mouth in 
amazement, had not opened his lips, 
and had done nothing but stare. Mr. 
Dorrit also had been utterly discomfit- 
ed, and quite unable to assert himself 
in any way. Fanny was now the first 
to speak. 


283 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


“ I never, never, never was so used ! ” 
she sobbed. “ There never was any- 
thing so harsh and unjustifiable, so 
disgracefully violent and cruel ! Dear, 
kind, quiet little Amy, too, — what would 
she feel if she could know that she had 
been innocently the means of exposing 
me to such treatment ! But I ’ll never 
tell her ! No, good darling, I ’ll never 
tell her ! ” 

This helped Mr. Dorrit to break his 
silence. 

“My dear,” said he, “I — ha — 
approve of your resolution. It will be 

— ha hum — much better not to speak 
of this to Amy. It might — hum — it 
might distress her. Ha. No doubt it 
would distress her greatly. It is con- 
siderate and right to avoid doing so. 
We will — ha — keep this to ourselves.” 

“But the cruelty of uncle!” cried 
Miss Fanny. “ O, I never can forgive 
the wanton cruelty of uncle ! ” 

“ My dear,” said Mr. Dorrit, recov- 
ering his tone, though he remained 
unusually pale, “ I must request you 
•not to say so. You must remember 
that your uncle is — ha — not what he 
formerly was. You must remember 
that your uncle’s state requires — hum 

— great forbearance from us, great for- 
bearance.” 

“ I am sure,” cried Fanny, piteously, 
“it is only charitable to suppose that 
there must be something wrong in him 
somewhere, or he never could have so 
attacked Me, of all the people in the 
world.” 

“ Fanny,” returned Mr. Dorrit, in a 
deeply fraternal tone, “you know, with 
his innumerable good points, what a — 
hum — Wreck your uncle is; and I 
entreat you by the fondness that I have 
for him, and by the fidelity that you 
know I have always shown him, to — 
ha — to draw your own conclusions, 
and to spare my brotherly feelings.” 

This ended the scene ; Edward Dor- 
rit, Esquire, saying nothing throughout, 
but looking, to the last, perplexed and 
doubtful. Miss Fanny awakened much 
affectionate uneasiness in her sister’s 
mind that day by passing the greater 
part of it in violent fits of embracing 
her, and in alternately giving her 
brooches, and wishing herself dead. 


CHAPTER VI. 

SOMETHING RIGHT SOMEWHERE. 

To be in the halting state of Mr. Hen- 
ry Gowan, — to have left one of two 
Powers in disgust, to want the necessa- 
ry qualifications for finding promotion 
with another, and to be loitering mood- 
ily about on neutral ground, cursing 
both, — is to be in a situation unwhole- 
some for the mind, which time is not 
likely to improve. The worst class of 
sum worked in the every-day world, is 
ciphered by the diseased arithmeti- 
cians who are always in the rule of 
Subtraction as to the merits and suc- 
cesses of others, and never in Addition 
as to their own. 

The habit, too, of seeking some sort 
of recompense in the disconten ted boast 
of being disappointed, is a habit fraught 
with degeneracy. A certain idle care- 
lessness and recklessness of consistency 
soon comes of it. To bring deserving 
things down by setting undeserving 
things up, is one of its perverted de- 
lights ; and there is no playing fast 
and loose with the truth, in any game, 
without growing the worse for it. 

In his expressed opinions of all per- 
formances in the Art of painting that 
were completely destitute of merit, 
Gowan was the most liberal fellow on 
earth. He would declare such a man 
to have more power in his little finger 
(provided he had none) than such an- 
other had (provided he-had much) in his 
whole mind and body. If the objection 
were taken that the thing commended 
was trash, he would reply, on behalf of 
his art, “My good fellow, what do we 
all turn out but trash ? / turn out noth- 
ing else, and I make you a present of 
the confession.” 

To make a vaunt of being poor was 
another of the incidents of his splenetic 
state, though this may have had the de- 
sign in it of showing that he ought to be 
rich ; just as he would publicly laud and 
decry the Barnacles, lest it should be 
forgotten that he belonged to the family. 
Howbeit, these two subjects were very of- 
ten on his lips ; and he managed them so 
well, that he might have praised himself 
by the month together, and not have 


MR. AND MRS. HENRY GOWAN 



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LITTLE DORRIT. 


283 


made himself out half so important a 
man as he did by his light disparage- 
ment of his claims on anybody’s consid- 
eration. 

Out of this same airy talk of his, it al- 
ways soon came to be understood, wher- 
ever he and his wife went, that he had 
married against the wishes of his exalted 
relations, and had had much ado to pre- 
vail on them to countenance her. He 
never made the representation ; on the 
contrary, seemed to laugh the idea to 
scorn ; but it did happen that, with 
all his pains to depreciate himself, he 
was always in the superior position. 
From the days of their honeymoon, 
Minnie Gowan felt sensible of being 
usually regarded as' the wife of a man 
who had made a descent in marrying 
her, but whose chivalrous love for her 
had cancelled that inequality. 

To Venice they had been accompanied 
by Monsieur Blandois of Paris, and at 
Venice Monsieur Blandois of Paris was 
very much in the society of Gowan. 
When they had first met this gallant 
gentleman at Geneva, Gowan had been 
undecided whether to kick him or en- 
courage him ; and had remained, for 
about four-and-twenty hours, so trou- 
bled to settle the point to his satisfac- 
tion, that he had thought of tossing up 
a five-franc piece on the terms, “ Tails, 
kick; heads, encourage,” and abiding 
by the voice of the oracle. It chanced, 
however, that his wife expressed a dis- 
like to the engaging Blandois, amd that 
the balance of feeling in the hotel was 
against him. Upon that, Gowan re- 
solved to encourage him. 

Why this perversity, if it were not in 
a generous fit ? — which it was not. Why 
should Gowan, very much the superior 
of Blandois of Paris, and very well able 
to pull that prepossessing gentleman to 
pieces, and find out the stuff he was 
made of, take up with such a man? In 
the first place, he opposed the first sep- 
arate wish he observed in his wife, 
because her father had paid his debts, 
and it was desirable to take an early op- 
portunity of asserting his independence. 
In the second place, he opposed the 
prevalent feeling, because, with many 
capacities of being otherwise, he was 
an ill-conditioned man. He found a 


pleasure in declaring that a courtier 
with the refined manners of Blandois 
ought to rise to the greatest distinc- 
tion in any polished country. He 
found a pleasure in setting up Blan- 
dois as the type of elegance, and mak- 
ing him a satire upon others who 
piqued themselves on personal graces. 
He seriously protested that the bow of 
Blandois was perfect, that the address 
of Blandois was irresistible, and that 
the picturesque ease of Blandois would 
be cheaply purchased (if it were not a 
gift, and unpurchasable) for a hundred 
thousand francs. That exaggeration in 
the manner of the man which has been 
noticed as appertaining to him and to 
every such man, whatever his original 
breeding, as cert. .inly as the sun be- 
longs to this system, was acceptable to 
Gowan as a caricature, which he found 
it a humorous resource to have at hand 
for the ridiculing of numbers of people 
who necessarily did more or less of what 
Blandois overdid. Thus he had taken 
up with him ; and thus, negligently 
strengthening these inclinations with 
habit, and idly deriving some amuse- 
ment from his talk, he had glided in- 
to a way of having him for a compan- 
ion. This, though he supposed him to 
live by his wits at play-tables and the 
like ; though he suspected him to be a 
coward, while he himself was daring and 
courageous ; though he thoroughly knew 
him to be disliked by Minnie; and 
though he cared so little for him, after 
all, that if he had given her any tangible 
personal cause to regard him with aver- 
sion, he would have had no compunction 
whatever in flinging him out of the high- 
est window in Venice into the deepest 
water of the city. 

Little Dorrit would have been glad to 
make her visit to Mrs. Gowan alone ; 
but as Fanny, who had not yet recov- 
ered from her uncle’s protest, though it 
was four-and-twenty hours of age, 
pressingly offered her company, the two 
sisters stepped together into one of the 
gondolas under Air. Dorrit’s window, 
and, with the courier in attendance, 
were taken in high state to Mrs. Gow- 
an’s lodging. In truth, their state was 
rather too high for the lodging, which 
was, as Fanny complained, “fearfully 


284 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


out of the way,” and which took them 
through a complexity of narrow streets 
of water, which the same lady dispar- 
aged as “ mere ditches.” 

The house, on a little desert island, 
looked as if it had broken away from 
somewhere else, and had floated by 
chance into its present anchorage, in 
company with a vine almost as much in 
want of training as the poor wretches 
who were lying under its leaves. The 
features of the surrounding picture 
were, a church with boarding and scaf- 
folding about it, which had been under 
supposititious repair so long that the 
means of repair looked a hundred years 
old, and had themselves fallen into de- 
cay ; a quantity of washed linen, spread 
to dry in the sun ; a number of houses 
at odds with one another and grotesque- 
ly out of the perpendicular, like rotten 
pre-Adamite cheeses cut into fantastic 
shapes and full of mites ; and a feverish 
bewilderment of windows, with their 
lattice-blinds all hanging askew, and 
something draggled and dirty dangling 
out of most of them. 

On the first floor of the house was a 
Bank, — a surprising experience for any 
gentleman of commercial pursuits 
bringing laws for all mankind from a 
British city, — where two spare clerks, 
like dried dragoons, in green velvet 
caps adorned with golden tassels, stood 
bearded behind a small counter in a 
small room, containing no other visible 
objects than an empty iron safe, with 
the door open, a jug of. water, and a 
papering of garlands of roses ; but 
who, on lawful requisition, by merely 
dipping their hands out of sight, could 
produce exhaustless mounds of five- 
franc pieces. Below the Bank was a 
suite of three or four rooms with barred 
windows, which had the appearance of 
a jail for criminal rats. Above the 
Bank was Mrs. Gowan’s residence. 

Notwithstanding that its walls were 
blotched, as if missionary maps were 
bursting out of them to impart geo- 
graphical knowledge ; notwithstanding 
that its weird furniture was forlornly 
faded and musty, and that the prevail- 
ing Venetian odor of bilge-water and 
an ebb-tide on a weedy shore w r as very 
strong; the place was better within 


than it promised. The door was opened 
by a smiling man like a reformed assas- 
sin, — a temporary servant, — who ush- 
ered them into the room where Mrs. 
Gowan sat, with the announcement 
that two beautiful English ladies were, 
come to see the mistress. 

Mrs. Gowan, who was engaged in 
needle-w'ork, put her work aside in a 
covered basket, and rose, a little hur- 
riedly. Miss Fanny w r as excessively 
courteous to her, and said the usual 
nothings with the skill of a veteran. 

“ Papa was extremely sorry,” pro- 
ceeded Fanny, “to be engaged to-day 
(he is so much engaged here, our ac- 
quaintance being so wretchedly large ! ) 
and particularly requested me to bring 
his card for Mr. Gowan. That I may 
be sure to acquit myself of a commis- 
sion which he impressed upon me at 
least a dozen times, allow me to relieve 
my conscience by placing it on the table 
at once.” 

Which she did with veteran ease. 

“We have been,” said Fanny, 
“charmed to understand that you know 
the Merdles. We hope it may be an- 
other means of bringing us together.” 

“They are friends,” said Mrs. Gow- 
an, “ of Mr. Gowan’s family. I have 
not yet had the pleasure of a personal 
introduction to Mrs. Merdle, but I sup- 
pose I shall be presented to her at 
Rome.” 

“ Indeed?” returned Fanny, with an 
appearance of amiably quenching her 
own superiority. “ 1 think you ’ll like 
her.” 

“ You know her very well ? ” 

“ Why, you see,” said Fanny, with a 
frank action of her pretty shoulders, 
“ in London one knows every one. We 
met her on our way here, and, to say 
the truth, papa was at first rather cross 
with her for taking one of the rooms 
that our people had ordered for us. 
However, of course that soon blew 
over, and we were all good friends 
again.” 

Although the visit had, as yet, given 
Little Dorrit no opportunity of convers- 
ing with Mrs. Gowan, there was a silent 
understanding between them, which did 
as well. She looked at Mrs. Gowan 
with keen and unabated interest ; the 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


sound of her voice was thrilling to her ; 
nothing that was near her, or about her, 
or at all concerned her, escaped Little 
Dorrit. She was quicker to perceive 
the slightest matter here than in any 
other case — but one. 

“You have been quite well,” she now 
said, “ since that night? ” 

“ Quite, my dear. And you ? ” 

“ Oh ! I am always well,” said 
Little Dorrit, timidly. “I — yes, thank 
you.” 

There was no reason for her faltering 
and breaking off, other than that Mrs. 
Gowan had touched her hand in speak- 
ing to her, and their looks had met. 
Something thoughtfully apprehensive in 
the large soft eyes had checked Little 
Dorrit in an instant. 

“You don’t know that you are a fa- 
vorite of my husband’s, and that I am 
almost bound to be jealous of you ? ” 
said Mrs. Gowan. 

Little Dorrit, blushing, shook her 
head. 

“ He will tell you, if he tells you what 
he tells me, that you are quieter, and 
quicker of resource, than any one he 
ever saw.” 

“ He speaks far too well of me,” said 
Little Dorrit. 

“ I doubt that ; but I don’t at all 
doubt that I must tell him you are here. 
I should never be forgiven, if I were to 
let you — and Miss Dorrit — go, with- 
out doing so. May I ? You can ex- 
cuse the disorder and discomfort of a 
painter’s studio ? ” 

The inquiries were addressed to Miss 
Fanny, who graciously replied that she 
would be beyond anything interested 
and enchanted. Mrs. Gowan went to 
a door, looked in beyond it, and came 
back. “ Do Henry the favor to come 
in,” said she. “ I knew he would be 
pleased ! ” 

The first object that confronted Little 
Dorrit, entering first, was Blandois of 
Paris in a great cloak and a furtive 
slouched hat, standing on a throne- 
platform in a corner, as he had stood 
on the Great Saint Bernard, when the 
warning arms seemed to be all pointing 
up at him. She recoiled from this fig- 
ure, as it smiled at her. 

“Don’t be alarmed,” said Gowan, 


2S5 

coming from his easel behind the door. 
“ It ’s only Blandois. He is doing duty 
as a model to-day. I am making a 
study of him. It saves me money to 
turn him to some use. We poor paint- 
ers have none to spare.” 

Blandois of Paris pulled off his 
slouched hat, and saluted the ladies 
without coming out of his corner. 

“A thousand pardons!” said he. 
“ But the Professor here is so inex- 
orable with me, that I am afraid to 
stir.” 

“ Don’t stir, then,” said Gowan, 
coolly, as the sisters approached the 
easel. “ Let the ladies at least see the 
original of the daub, that they may 
know what it ’s meant for. There he 
stands, you see. A bravo waiting for 
his prey, a distinguished noble waiting 
to save his country, the common enemy 
waiting to do somebody a bad turn, an 
angelic messenger waiting to do some- 
body a good turn, — whatever you think 
he looks most like ! ” 

“ Say, Professore Mio, a poor gentle- 
man waiting to do homage to elegance 
and beauty,” remarked Blandois. 

“ Or say, Cattivo Soggetto Mio,” re- 
turned Gowan, touching the painted 
face with his brush in the part where 
the real face had moved, “ a murderer 
after the fact. Show that white hand 
of yours, Blandois. Put it outside the 
cloak. Keep it still.” 

Blandois’s hand was unsteady ; but he 
laughed, and that would naturally shake 
it. 

“He was formerly in some scuffle 
with another murderer, or with a victim, 
you observe,” said Gowan, putting in 
the markings of the hand with a quick, 
impatient, unskilful touch, “ and these 
are the tokens of it. Outside the cloak, 
man! — Corpo di San Marco, what 
are you thinking of! ” 

Blandois of Paris shook with a laugh 
again, so that his hand shook more ; 
now he raised it to twist his mustache, 
which had a damp appearance ; and 
now he stood in the required position, 
with a little new swagger. 

His face was so directed, in reference 
to the spot where Little Dorrit stood by 
the easel, that throughout he looked at 
her. Once, attracted by his peculiar 


2S6 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


eyes, she could not remove her own, 
and they had looked at each other all 
the time. She trembled now; Gowan, 
feeling it, and supposing her to be 
alarmed by the large dog beside him, 
whose head she caressed in her hand, 
and who had just uttered a low growl, 
glanced at her to say, “ He won’t hurt 
you, Miss Dorrit.” 

“I am not afraid of him,” she re- 
turned, in the same breath ; “ but will 
you look at him ? ” 

In a moment Gowan had thrown down 
his brush, and seized the dog with both 
hands by the collar. 

“ Blandois ! How can you be such 
a fool as to provoke him ! By Heaven, 
and the other place too, he ’ll tear you 
to bits ! Lie down ! Lion ! Do you 
hear my voice, you rebel ! ” 

The great dog, regardless of being 
half choked by his collar, was obdu- 
rately pulling with his dead weight 
against his master, resolved to get 
across the room. He had been crouch- 
ing for a spring at the moment when 
lus master caught him. 

“ Lion ! Lion ! ” He was up on his 
hind legs, and it was a wrestle between 
master and dog. “ Get back ! Down, 
Lion ! Get out of his sight, Blandois ! 
What devil have you conjured into the 
dog?” 

“ I have done nothing to him.” 

“ Get out of his sight, or I can’t hold 
the wild beast ! Get out of the room ! 

- By my soul, he ’ll kill you ! ” 

The dog, with a ferocious bark, made 
one other struggle, as Blandois van- 
ished ; then, in the moment of the dog’s 
submission, the master, little less angry 
than the dog, felled him with a blow on 
the head, and, standing over him, struck 
him many times severely with the heel 
of his boot, so that his mouth was pres- 
ently bloody. 

“ Now get you into that corner and 
lie down,” said Gowan, “or I’ll take 
you out and shoot you.” 

Lion did as he was ordered, and lay 
down licking his mouth and chest. 
Lion’s master stopped for a moment to 
take breath, and then, recovering his 
usual coolness of manner, turned to 
speak to his frightened wife and her 
visitors.^ Probably the whole occur- 


rence had not occupied two min- 
utes. 

“ Come, come, Minnie ! You know 
he is always good-humored and tracta- 
ble. Blandois must have irritated him, 
— made faces at .him. The dog has his 
likings and dislikings, and Blandois is 
no great favorite of his ; but I am sure 
you ’ll give him a character, Minnie, for 
never having been like this before.” 

Minnie was too much disturbed to say 
anything connected in reply ; Little 
Dorrit was already occupied in soothing 
her ; Fanny, who had cried out twice or 
thrice, held Gowan’s arm for protec- 
tion ; Lion, deeply ashamed of having 
caused them this alarm, came trailing 
himself along the ground to the feet of 
his mistress. 

“You furious brute,” said Gowan, 
striking him with his foot again. “ You 
shall do penance for this.” And he 
struck him again, and yet again. 

“ O, pray don’t punish him any 
more,” cried Little Dorrit. “Don’t 
hurt him. See how gentle he is ! ” At 
her entreaty, Gowan spared him ; and 
he deserved her intercession, for truly 
he was as submissive, and as sorry, and" 
as wretched, as a dog could be. 

It was not easy to recover this shock 
and make the visit unrestrained, even 
though Fanny had not been, under the 
best of circumstances, the least trifle in 
the way. In such further communica- 
tion as passed among them before the 
sisters took their departure, Little Dor- 
rit fancied it was revealed to her that 
Mr. Gowan treated his wife, even in his 
very fondness, too much like a beauti- 
ful child. He seemed so unsuspicious 
of the depths of feeling which she knew 
must lie below that surface, that she 
doubted if there could be any such 
depths in himself. She wondered 
whether his want of earnestness might 
be the natural result of his want of such 
qualities, and whether it was with peo- 
ple as with ships, that, in too shallow 
and rocky waters, their anchors had no 
hold, and they drifted anywhere. 

He attended them down the stair- 
case, jocosely apologizing for the poor 
quarters to which such poor fellows 
as himself were limited, and remarking 
that when the high and. mighty Barna- 


LITTLE DORR IT. 


2S7 


cles, his relatives, who would be dread- 
fully ashamed of them, presented him 
with better, he would live in better to 
oblige them. At the water’s edge they 
were saluted by Blandois, who looked 
white enough after his adventure, but 
who made very light of it notwith- 
standing, — laughing at the mention 
of Lion. 

Leaving the two together, under the 
scrap of vine upon the causeway, Gow- 
an idly scattering the leaves from it 
into the water, and Blandois lighting 
a cigarette, the sisters were paddled 
away in state as they had come. They 
had not glided on for many minutes, 
when Little Dorrit became aware that 
Fanny Vlas more showy in manner than 
the occasion appeared to require, and, 
looking about for the cause, through 
the window and through the open door, 
saw another gondola evidently in wait- 
ing on them. 

As this gondola attended their prog- 
ress in various artful ways ; sometimes 
shooting on ahead, and stopping to 
let them pass ; sometimes, when the 
way was broad enough, skimming along 
side by side with them ; and sometimes 
following close astern ; and as Fanny 
gradually made no disguise that she 
was playing off graces upon somebody 
within it, of whom she at the same 
time feigned to be unconscious ; Little 
Dorrit at length asked who it was?” 

To which Fanny made the short 
answer, “That gaby.” 

“Who?” said Little Dorrit. 

“My dear child,” returned Fanny 
(in a tone suggesting that before her 
uncle’s protest she might have, said, 
You little fool, instead), “ how slow you 
are ! Young Sparkler.” 

She lowered the window on her side, 
and, leaning back and resting her elbow 
on it negligently, fanned herself with 
a rich Spanish fan of black and gold. 
The attendant gondola, having skimmed 
forward again, with some swift trace 
of an eye in the window, Fanny laughed 
coquettishly, and said, “ Did you ever 
see such a fool, my love?” . 

“ Do you think he means to follow 
you all the way ? ” asked Little Dor- 
rit. 

“ My precious child,” returned Fan- 


ny, “ I can’t possibly answer for what 
an idiot in a state of desperation may 
do, but I should think it highly proba- 
ble. It ’s not such an enormous dis- 
tance. All Venice would scarcely be 
that, I imagine, if he ’s dying for a 
glimpse of me.” 

“And is he?” asked Little Dorrit, 
in perfect simplicity. 

“ Well, my love, that really is an 
awkward question for me to answer,” 
said her sister. “ I believe he is. You 
had better ask Edward. He tells Ed- 
ward he is, I believe. I understand 
he makes a perfect spectacle of himself 
at the Casino, and that sort of places, 
by going on about me. But you had 
better ask Edward, if you want to 
know.” 

“ I wonder he does n’t call,” said 
Little Dorrit, after thinking a mo- 
ment. 

“ My dear Amy, your wonder will 
soon cease, if I am rightly informed. 
I should not be at all surprised if he 
called to-day. The creature has only 
been waiting to get his courage up, 
I suspect.” 

“ Will you see him ? ” 

“Indeed, my darling,” said Fanny, 
“ that ’s just as it may happen. Here 
he is again. Look at him. O you 
simpleton ! ” 

Mr. Sparkler had, undeniably, a 
weak appearance ; with his eye in the 
window like a knot in the glass, and 
no reason on earth for stopping his 
bark suddenly, except the real reason. 

“ When you asked me if I will see 
him, my dear,” said Fanny, almost as 
well composed in the graceful indif- 
ference of her attitude as Mrs. Merdle 
herself, “what do you mean?” 

“I mean,” said little Dorrit, — “I 
think I rather mean what do you mean, 
dear Fanny? ” 

Fanny laughed again,, in a manner 
at once condescending,' arch, and affa- 
ble ; and said, putting her arm round 
her sister in a playfully affectionate 
way, — 

“ Now tell me, my little pet. When 
we saw that woman at Martigny, how 
did you think she carried it off. Did 
you see what she decided on in a 
moment?” 


283 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


“ No, Fanny.” 

“Then I’ll tell you, Amy. She 
settled with herself, now I ’ll never 
refer to that meeting under such dif- 
ferent circumstances, and I ’ll never 
pretend to have any idea that these 
are the same girls. That ’s her way 
out of a difficulty. What did I tell 
you, when we came away from Harley 
Street that time? She is as insolent 
and false as any woman in the world. 
But in the first capacity, my love, she 
may find people who can match her.” 

A significant turn of the Spanish fan 
towards Fanny’s bosom, indicated with 
great expression where one of these 
people was to be found. 

“Not onlv that,” pursued Fanny, 
“but she gives the same charge to 
Young Sparkler; and doesn’t let him 
come after me until she has got it 
thoroughly into his most ridiculous of 
all ridiculous noddles (for one really 
can’t call it a head), that he is to pre- 
tend to have been first struck with me 
in that Inn Yard.” 

“ Why ? ” asked Little Dorrit. 

“Why? Good gracious, my love!” 
(again very much in the tone of You 
stupid little creature,) “ how can you 
ask ? Don’t you see that I may have 
become a rather desirable match for a 
noodle? And don’t you see that she 
puts the deception upon us, and makes 
a pretence, while she shifts it from her 
own shoulders (very good shoulders 
they are too, I must say),” observed 
Miss Fanny, glancing complacently at 
herself, “of considering our feelings ? ” 

“ But we can always go back to the 
plain truth.” 

“Yes, but if "you please, we won’t,” 
retorted Fanny. “ No ; I am not go- 
ing to have that done, Amy. The pre- 
text is none of mine ; it ’s hers, and 
she shall have enough of it.” 

In the triumphant exaltation of her 
feelings, Miss Fanny, using her Span- 
ish fan with one hand, squeezed her 
sister’s waist with the other, as if she 
were crushing Mrs. Merdle. 

“ No,” repeated Fanny. “She shall 
find me go her way. She took it, and 
I ’ll follow it. And, with the blessing 
of fate and fortune, I ’ll go on improv- 
ing that woman’s acquaintance until I 


have given her maid, before her eyes, 
things from my dressmaker’s ten times 
as handsome and expensive as she once 
gave me from hers ! ” 

Little Dorrit was silent, sensible 
that she was not to be heard on any 
question affecting the family dignity ; 
and unwilling to lose to no purpose her 
sister’s newly and unexpectedly re- 
stored favor. She could not concur, 
but she was silent. Fanny well knew 
what she was thinking of, — so well that 
she soon asked her. 

Her reply was, “ Dq you mean to 
encourage Mr. Sparkler, Fanny?” 

“Encourage him, my dear?” said her 
sister, smiling contemptuously; “that 
depends upon what you call encourage. 
No, I don’t mean to encourage him. 
But I ’ll make a slave of him.” 

Little Dorrit glanced seriously and 
doubtfully in her face, but Fanny was 
not to be so brought to a check. She 
furled her fan of black and gold, and 
used it to tap her sister’s nose ; with 
the air of a proud beauty and a great 
spirit, who toyed with and playfully 
instructed a homely companion. 

“ I shall make him fetch and carry, 
my dear, and I shall make him subject 
to me. And if I don’t make his mother 
subject to me, too, it shall not be my 
fault.” 

“ Do you think — dear Fanny, don’t 
be offended, we are so comfortable to- 
gether now — that you can quite see 
the end of that course? ” 

“ I can’t say I have so much as looked 
for it yet, my dear,” answered Fanny, 
with supreme indifference; “all in 
good time. Such are my intentions. 
And really they have taken me so long 
to develop, that here we are at home. 
And Young Sparkler at the door, in- 
quiring who is within. By the merest 
accident, of course ! ” 

In effect, the swain was standing up 
in his gondola, card -case in hand, affect- 
ing to put the question to, a servant. 
This conjunction of circumstances led 
to his immediately afterwards present- 
ing himself before the young ladies in 
a posture which in ancient times would 
not have been considered one of favor- 
able augury for his suit ; since the gon- 
doliers of tlie young ladies, having been 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


289 


put to some inconvenience by the chase, 
so neatly brought their own boat in the 
gentlest collision with the bark of Mr. 
Sparkler, as to tip that gentleman over 
like a large species of ninepin, and 
cause him to exhibit the soles of his 
shoes to the object of his dearest wishes ; 
while the nobler portions of his anato- 
my struggled at the bottom of his boat, 
in the arms of one of his men. 

However, as Miss Fanny called out 
with much concern, Was the gentleman 
hurt, Mr. Sparkler rose more restored 
than might have been expected, and 
stammered for himself with blushes. 
“ Not at all so.” Miss Fanny had no 
recollection of having ever seen him 
before, and was passing on, with a dis- 
tant inclination of her head, when he 
announced himself by name. Even 
then, she was in a difficulty from being 
unable to call it to mind,, until he ex- 
plained that he had had the honor of 
seeing her at Martigny. Then she re- 
membered him, and hoped his lady- 
mother was well. 

“ Thank you,” stammered Mr. Spark- 
ler, “ she ’s uncommonly well — at least 
poorly.” 

“ In Venice ? ” said Miss Fanny. 

“ In Rome,” Mr. Sparkler answered. 
“ I am here by myself, myself. I came 
to call upon Mr. Edward Dorrit myself. 
Indeed, upon Mr. Dorrit likewise. In 
fact, upon the family.” 

Turning graciously to the attendants, 
Miss Fanny inquired whether her papa 
or brother was within ? The reply be- 
ing that they were both within, Mr. 
Sparkler humbly offered his arm. Miss 
Fanny, accepting it, was squired up the 
reat staircase by Mr. Sparkler, who, if 
e still believed (which there is not any 
reason to doubt) that she had no non- 
sense about her, rather deceived him- 
self. 

Arrived in a mouldering reception- 
room, where the faded hangings, of a 
sad sea-green, had worn and withered, 
until they looked as if they might have 
claimed kindred with the waifs of sea- 
weed drifting under the windows, or 
clinging to the walls and weeping for 
their imprisoned relations. Miss Fanny 
despatched emissaries for her father and 
brother. Pending whose appearance, 

19 


she showed to great advantage on a 
sofa, completing Mr. Sparkler’s con- 
quest with some remarks upon Dante, — 
known to that gentleman as an eccentric 
man in the nature of an Old File, who 
used to put leaves round his head, and 
sit upon a stool for some unaccountable 
purpose, outside the cathedral at Flor- 
ence. 

Mr. Dorrit -welcomed the visitor with 
the highest urbanity, and most courtly 
manners. He inquired particularly after 
Mrs. Merdle. He inquired particularly 
after Mr. Merdle. Mr. Sparkler said, 
or rather twitched out of himself in 
small pieces by the shirt-collar, that 
Mrs. Merdle, having completely used 
up her place in the country, and also 
her house at Brighton, and being, of 
course, unable, don’t you see, to remain 
in London when there was n’t a soul 
there, and not-feeling herself this year 
quite up to visiting about at people’s 
places, had resolved to have a touch at 
Rome, where a woman like herself, with 
. a proverbially fine appearance and with 
no nonsense about her, could n’t fail to 
be a great acquisition. As to Mr. Mer- 
dle, he was so much wanted by the men 
in the City and the rest of those places, 
and was such a doosed extraordinary 
phenomenon in Buying and Banking 
and that, that Mr. Sparkler doubted if 
the monetary system of the country 
would be able to spare him ; though 
that his work was occasionally one too 
many for him, and that he would be all 
the better for a temporary shy at an en- 
tirely new scene and climate, Mr. Spark- 
ler did not conceal. As to himself, Mr. 
Sparkler conveyed to the Dorrit family 
that he was going, on rather particu- 
lar business, wherever they were go- 
ing. 

This immense conversational achieve- 
ment required time, but was effected. 
Being effected, Mr. Dorrit expressed his 
hope that Mr. Sparkler would shortly 
dine with them. Mr. Sparkler received 
the idea so kindly, that Mr. Dorrit asked 
what he was going to do that day, 
for instance. As he was going to do 
nothing that day (his usual occupation, 
and one for which he was particularly 
- qualified), he was secured without post- 
ponement ; being further bound over to 


290 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


accompany the ladies to the Opera in 
the evening. 

At dinner-time Mr. Sparkler rose out 
of the sea, like Venus’s son taking after 
his mother, and made a splendid ap- 
pearance ascending the great staircase. 
If Fanny had been charming in the 
morning, she was now thrice charming, 
very becomingly dressed in her most 
suitable colors, and with an air of neg- 
ligence upon her that doubled Mr. 
Sparkler’s fetters, and riveted them. 

“ I hear you are acquainted, Mr. 
Sparkler,” said his host, at dinner, 
“ with — ha — Mr. Gowan. Mr. Henry 
Gowan ? ” 

“ Perfectly, sir,” returned Mr. Spark- 
ler. “ His mother and my mother are 
cronies, in fact.” 

“ If I had thought of it, Amy,” said 
Mr. Dorrit, with a patronage as mag- 
nificent as that of Lord Decimus him- 
self, “ you should have despatched a 
note to them, asking them to dine to- 
day. Some of our people could have — 
ha — fetched them, and taken them 
home. W e could have spared a — hum 

— gondola for that purpose. I am sorry 
to have forgotten this. Pray remind me 
of them to-morrow.” 

Little Dorrit was not without doubts 
how Mr. Henry Gowan might take their 
patronage ; but she promised not to 
fail in the reminder. 

“ Pray, does Mr. Henry Gowan paint 

— ha — Portraits? ” inquired Mr. Dor- 
rit. 

Mr. Sparkler opined that he painted 
anything, if he could get the job. 

“He has no particular walk?” said 
Mr. Dorrit. 

Mr. Sparkler, stimulated by Love to 
brilliancy, replied that for a particular 
walk, a man ought to have a particular 
pair of shoes ; as, for example, shooting, 
shooting-shoes; cricket, cricket-shoes. 
Whereas, he believed that Henry 
Gowan had no particular pair of shoes. 

“No speciality? ” said Mr. Dorrit. 

This being a very long word for Mr. 
Sparkler, and his mind being exhausted 
by his late effort, he replied: “No, 
thank you. I seldom take it.” 

“ Well ! ” said Mr. Dorrit. “ It 
would be very agreeable to me to pre- 
sent a gentleman so connected with 


some — ha — Testimonial of my desire 
to further his interests, and develop 
the — hum — germs of his genius. I 
think I must engage Mr. Gowan to 
paint my picture. If the result should 
be — ha — mutually satisfactory, I 
might afterwards engage him to try his 
hand upon my family.” 

The exquisitely bold and original 
thought presented itself to Mr. Spark- 
ler, that there was an opening here for 
saying there were some of the family 
(emphasizing “some” in a marked 
manner) to whom no painter could ren- 
der justice. But, for want of a form of 
words in which to express the idea, it 
returned to the skies. 

This was the more to be regretted as 
Miss Fanny greatly applauded the no- 
tion of the portrait, and urged her papa 
to act upon it. She surmised, she said, 
that Mr. Gowan had lost better and 
higher opportunities by marrying his 
pretty wife ; and Love in a cottage, 
painting pictures for dinner, was so de- 
lightfully interesting, that she begged 
her papa to give him the commission, 
whether he could paint a likeness or 
not : though indeed both she and Amy 
knew he could, from having seen a 
speaking likeness on his easel that day, 
and having had the opportunity of com- 
paring it with the original. These re- 
marks made Mr. Sparkler (as perhaps 
they were intended to do) nearly dis- 
tracted ; for while on the one hand they 
expressed Miss Fanny’s susceptibility 
to the tender passion, she herself showed 
such an innocent unconsciousness of 
his admiration, that his eyes goggled in 
his head with jealousy of an unknown 
rival. 

Descending into the sea again after 
dinner, and ascending out of it at the 
Opera staircase, preceded by one of 
their gondoliers, like an attendant Mer- 
man, with a great linen lantern, they 
entered their box, and Mr. Sparkler en- 
tered on an evening of agony. The 
theatre being dark, and the box light, 
several visitors lounged in during the 
representation : in whom Fanny was so 
interested, and in conversation with 
whom she fell into such charming atti- 
tudes, as she had little confidences with 
them, and little disputes concerning the 


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LITTLE DORRIT. 


291 


identity of people in distant boxes, that 
the wretched Sparkler hated all man- 
kind. But he had two consolations at 
the close of the performance. She gave 
him her fan to hold while she adjusted 
her cloak, and it was his blessed privi- 
lege to give her his arm down stairs 
again. These crumbs of encourage- 
ment, Mr. Sparkler thought, would just 
keep him going ; and it is not impossi- % 
ble that Miss Dorrit thought so too. 

The Merman with his light was ready 
at the box door, and other Mermen 
with other lights were ready at many of 
the doors. The Dorrit Merman held 
his lantern low, to show the steps, and 
Mr. Sparkler put on another heavy set 
of fetters over his former set, as he 
watched her radiant feet twinkling 
down the stairs beside him. Among the 
loiterers here, was Blandois of Paris. 
He spoke, and moved forward beside 
Fanny. 

Little Dorrit was in front, with her 
brother and Mrs. General (Mr. Dorrit 
had remained at home) ; but on the 
brink of the quay they all came togeth- 
er. She started again to find Blandois 
close to her, handing Fanny into the 
boat. 

“Gowan has had a loss,” he said, 

“ since he was made happy to-day by a 
visit from fair ladies.” 

“A loss?” repeated Fanny, relin- 
quished by the bereaved Sparkler, and 
taking her seat. 

“ A loss,” said Blandois. “ His dog, 
Lion.” 

Little Dorrit’s hand was in his, as he 
spoke. 

“ He is dead,” said Blandois. 

“ Dead ? ” echoed Little Dorrit. 

“ That noble dog ? ” 

“ Faith, dear ladies ! ” said Blandois, 
smiling and’ shrugging his shoulders, 
“somebody has poisoned that noble 
dog. He is as dead as the Doges ! ” 


CHAPTER VII. 

MOSTLY PRUNES AND PRISM. 

Mrs. General, always on her coach- 
box keeping the proprieties well to- 


gether, took pains to form a surface on 
her very dear young friend, and Mrs. 
General’s very dear young friend tried 
hard to receive it. Hard as she had 
tried in her laborious life to attain many 
ends, she had never tried harder than 
she did now to be varnished by Mrs. 
General. It made her anxious and ill 
at ease to be operated upon by that 
smoothing hand, it is true ; but she 
submitted herself to the family want in 
its greatness as she had submitted her- 
self to the family want in its littleness, 
and yielded to her own inclinations in 
this thing no more than she had yielded 
to her hunger itself, in the days when 
she had saved her dinner that her father 
might have his supper. 

One comfort that she had under the 
Ordeal by General was more sustaining 
to her, and made her more grateful, 
than to a less devoted and affectionate 
spirit, not habituated to her struggles 
and sacrifices, might appear quite rea- 
sonable ; and, indeed, it may often be 
observed in life, that spirits like Little 
Dorrit do not appear to reason half 
as carefully as the folks who get the bet- 
ter of them. The continued kindness 
of her sister was this comfort to Little 
Dorrit. It was nothing to her that the 
kindness took the form of tolerant pat- 
ronage ; she was used to that. It was 
nothing to her that it kept her in a trib- 
utary position, and showed her in at- 
tendance on the flaming car in which 
Miss Fanny sat on an elevated seat, ex- 
acting homage ; she sought no better 
place. Always admiring Fanny’s beau- 
ty, and grace, and readiness, and not 
now asking herself how much of her 
disposition to be strongly attached to 
Fanny was due to her own heart, and 
how much to Fanny’s, she gave her all 
the sisterly fondness her great heart con- 
tained. 

The wholesale amount of Prunes and 
Prism which Mrs. General infused into 
the family life, combined with the per- 
petual plunges made by Fanny into so- 
ciety, left but a very small residue of 
any natural deposit at the bottom of the 
mixture. This rendered confidences 
with Fanny doubly precious to Little 
Dorrit, and heightened the relief they 
afforded her. 


292 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


“ Amy,” said Fanny to her one night 
when they were alone, after a day so 
tiring that Little Dorrit was quite worn 
out, though Fanny would have taken 
another dip into society with the great- 
est pleasure in life, “ I am going to put 
something into your little head. You 
won’t guess what it is, I suspect.” 

“I don’t think that’s likely, dear,” 
said Little Dorrit. 

n Come, I ’ll give you a clew, child,” 
said Fanny. “Mrs. General.” 

Prunes and Prism, in a thousand 
combinations, having been wearily in 
the ascendant all day, — everything 
having Been surface and varnish, and 
show without substance, — Little Dorrit 
looked as if she had hoped that Mrs. 
General was safely tucked up in bed for 
some hours. 

™ Now, can you guess, .Amy? ” said 
‘Fanny. 

“ No, dear. Unless Thave done any- 
thing, ’ ’ said Little Dorrit, rather alarmed, 
and meaning anything calculated to 
crack varnish and ruffle surface. 

Fanny was so very much amused by 
the misgiving, that she took up her fa- 
vorite fan (being then seated at her 
dressing-table with her armory of cruel 
instruments about her, most of them 
reeking from the heart of Sparkler), and 
tapped her sister frequently on the nose 
with it, laughing all the time. 

“ O our Amy, our Amy ! ” said Fan- 
ny. “What a timid little goose our 
Amy is ! But this is nothing to laugh 
at. On the. contrary, I am very cross, 
my dear.” 

“ As it is not with me, Fanny, I don’t 
mind,” returned her sister, smiling. 

“ Ah ! But I do mind,” said Fanny, 
“ and so will you, Pet, when I enlighten 
you.' Amy, has it never struck you that 
somebody is monstrously polite to Mrs. 
General ? ” 

“ Everybody is polite to Mrs. Gener- 
al,” said Little Dorrit. “ Because — ” 

“ Because she freezes them into it?” 
interrupted Fanny. “I don’t mean 
that; quite different from that. Come! 
Has it never struck you, Amy, that pa 
is monstrously polite to Mrs. General.” 

Amy, murmuring “ No,” looked quite 
confounded. 

“ No ; I dare say not. But he is,” 


said Fanny. “He is, Amy. And re- 
member my words. Mrs. General has 
designs on pa!” 

“ Dear Fanny, do you think it possi- 
ble that Mrs. General has designs on 
any one? ” 

“ Do I think it possible ? ” retorted 
Fanny. “My love, I know it. I tell 
you she has designs on pa. And more 
than that, I tell you, pa considers her 
such a wonder, such a paragon of ac- 
complishment, and such an acquisition 
to our family, that he is ready to get 
himself into a state of perfect infatuation 
with her at any moment. And that 
opens a pretty picture of things, I hope ! 
Think of me with Mrs. General for a 
mamma ! ” 

Little Dorrit did not reply, “ Think 
of me with Mrs. General for a mamma” ; 
but she looked anxious, and seriously 
inquired what had led Fanny to these 
conclusions. 

“ Lard, my darling,” said Fanny, 
tartly. “ You might as well ask me 
how I know when a man is struck with 
myself ! But of course I do know. It 
happens pretty often ; but I always 
know it. I know this, in much the 
same way, I suppose. At all events, I 
know it.” 

“You never heard papa say any- 
thing ? ” 

“Say anything?” repeated Fanny. 
“ My dearest, darling child, what ne- 
cessity has he had, yet awhile, to say 
anything ? ” 

“ And you have never heard Mrs. 
General say anything?” 

“My goodness me, Amy,” returned 
Fanny, “is she the sort of woman to 
say anything? Isn’t it perfectly plain 
and clear that she has nothing to do, at 
present, but to hold herself upright, 
keep her aggravating gloved on, and go 
sweeping about? Say anything ! If 
she had the ace of trumps in her hand, 
at whist, she wouldn’t say anything, 
child. It would- come out when she 
played it.” 

“ At least, you may be mistaken, 
Fanny. Now may you not?” 

“ O yes, I may be,” said Fanny, 
“but I am not. However, I am glad 
you can contemplate such an escape, 
my dear, and I am glad that you can 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


293 


take this for the present with sufficient 
coolness to think of such a chance. It 
makes me hope that you may be able 
to bear the connection. I should not 
be able to bear it, and I should not try. 
I’d marry young Sparkler first. 

“ O, you would never marry him, 
Fanny, under any circumstances.” 

“ Upon my word, my dear,” rejoined 
that young lady, with exceeding indiffer- 
ence, “1 wouldn’t positively answer 
even for. that. There ’s no knowing 
what might happen. Especially as I 
should have' many opportunities, after- 
wards, of treating that vfroman, his 
mother, in her own style. Which I 
most decidedly should not be slow to 
avail myself of, Amy.” 

No more passed between the sisters 
then ; but what had passed gave, the 
two subjects of Mrs. General and Mr. 
Sparkler great prominence in Little Dor- 
rit’s mind, and thenceforth she thought 
very much of both. , 

Mrs. General, having long ago formed 
her own surface to such perfection that 
it hid whatever was below it (if any- 
thing), no observation was to be made 
in that quarter; - Mr. Dorrit was un- 
deniably very polite to her, and had a 
high opinion of her; but Fanny, im- 
petuous at most times, might easily be 
wrong for all that. Whereas, the 
Sparkler question was on ‘the different 
footing that any one could see 'what 
was going on there, and Little .Dorrit 
saw it, and pondered on if, with matiy 
doubts and wonderings. 

The devotion of Mr. Sparkler was 
only to be equalled by the caprice . and 
cruelty of his enslaver. Sometimes she 
would prefer him to such distinction of 
notice, that he would chuckle- aloud 
with joyjnext day, or next hour, she 
would ova|ook him so completely, and 
drop him* into such an abyss of obscu- 
rity, that he would grqan under a weak 
pretence, of coughing. - The constancy 
of his attendance never touched Fanny : 
though he Ayas*'so inseparable from 
Edward, thsQf* when that gentleman 
wished for -a change of society he was 
under the irksome necessity of gliding 
out like a conspirator, in disguised boats 
and by secret doors and back ways; 
though he was so solicitous to know 


how Mr. Dorrit was, that he called 
every other day to inquire, as if Mr. 
Dorrit were the prey of an intermittent 
fever ; though he was so constantly 
being paddled up and down before the 
principal windows, that he might have 
been supposed to have made a wager 
for a large stake to be paddled a thou- 
sand miles in a thousand hours ; though 
whenever the gondola of his mistress 
left the gate, the gondola of Mr. Spark- 
ler shot out from some watery ambush 
and gave chase, as if she were a fair 
smuggler and he a custom-house officer. 

It was probably owing to this fortifica- 
tion of the natural strength of his con- 
stitution with so much exposure to the 
air, and the salt sea, that Mr. Sparkler 
did not pine outwardly ; but, whatever 
the cause, he was so far from having 
any prospect of moving his mistress by 
a languishing state of health, that he 
grew bluffer every day, and that pecu- 
liarity in his appearance of seeming 
rather a swelled boy than a young man 
became developed to an extraordinary 
degree of ruddy puffiness. 

Blandois calling to pay his respects, 
Mr. Dorrit received him with affability 
as the friend of Mr. .Gowai$ and. men- 
tioned to him his idea of commissioning 
Mr. Gowan to transmit him tp posterity. 
Blandois highly extolling^it, it occurred 
to Mr. Dorrit that it might be agreeable 
to Blandois to communicate to hii friend 
the great opportunity, reserved for him. 
Blandois accepteddlie commission with 
his own free elegance of manner^ and 
swore he would" discharge' it before' he 
was an hour older. On his importing ' 
the news to Gowan, that Master j^ye 
Mr. Dorrit to the Devil with great In)- 
erality some round dozen of tipj£s (for 
he resented patronage almost as much 
as he resented the want of it), and was 
inclined to quarrel with his friend for 
bringing him the message. 1; 

“It may be a defect in my mental 
vision, Blandois,” said he, “but may I 
die if I *see*what you have to dp with 
this.” ’ 

“ Death of my life,” replied Blandois, 
“nor I neither, except that I thought I 
was serving my friend.” 

“ By putting an upstart’s hire in his 
pocket?” said Gowan, frowning, “Do 


294 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


you mean that ? Tell your other friend 
to get his head painted for the sign of 
some public-house, and to get it done 
by a sign-painter. Who am I, and who 
is he?” 

“ Professore,” returned the ambassa- 
dor, “ and who is Blandois ? ” 

Without appearing at all interested 
in the latter question, Gowan angrily 
whistled Mr. Dorrit away. But, next 
day, he resumed the subject by saying 
in his off-hand manner, and with a 
slighting laugh, “Well, Blandois, when 
shall we go to this Magcenas of yours? 
We journeymen must take jobs when 
we can get them. When shall we go 
and look after this job ? ” 

“ When you will,” said the injured 
Blandois, “ as you please. What have 
I to do with it? What is it to me ? ” 

“ I can tell you what it is to me,” 
said Gowan. “ Bread and cheese. One 
must eat ! So come along, my Blan- 
dois.” 

Mr. Dorrit received them in the pres- 
ence of his daughters and of Mr. Spark- 
ler, who happened, by some surprising 
accident, to be calling there. “ How 
are you, Sparkler?” said Gowan, care- 
lessly. “When you have to live by 
your mother wit, old boy, I hope you 
may get on better than I do.” 

Mr. Dorrit then mentioned his pro- 
posal. “Sir,’*. said Gowan, laughing, 
after ^receiving it gracefully enough, “I 
am new to the trade, and not expert at 
its mysteries. I believe I ought to look 
at you in various lights, tell you you are 
a capital subject, and consider when I 
shS^Spbe sufficiently disengaged to de- 
void myself with the necessary enthusi- 
asm to the fine picture I mean to make 
of you. I assure you,” and he laughed 
again, “I feel quite a traitor in the 
camp of those dear, gifted, good, noble 
fellows, my brother artists, by not doing 
the hocus-pocus better. But I have not 
been brought up to it, and it ’s too late 
to learn it. Nov/, the fact is, I am a 
very bad painter, but not much worse 
than the generality. If you are going 
to throw away a hundred guineas or so, 
I am as poor as a poor relation of great 
people usually is, and I shall be very 
much obliged to you, if you ’ll throw 
them away upon me. I ’ll do the best 


I can for the money ; and if the best 
should be bad, why, even then, you may 
probably'* have a bad picture with a 
small name to it, instead of a bad pic- 
ture with a large name to it.” 

This tone, though not what he had 
expected, on the whole suited Mr. Dor- 
rit remarkably well. It showed that 
the gentleman, highly connected, and 
not a mere workman, would be under 
an obligation to him. He expressed his 
satisfaction in placing himself in Mr. 
Gowan’s hands, and trusted that he 
would have the pleasure, in their char- 
acters as private gentlemen, of improv- 
ing his acquaintance. 

“You are very good,” said Gowan. 
“ I have not forsworn society since I 
joined the brotherhood of the brush (the 
most delightful fellows on the face of 
the earth), and am glad enough to smell 
the old fine gunpowder now and then, 
though it did blow me into mid-air and 
my present calling. You’ll not think, 
Mr. Dorrit,” and here he laughed again, 
in the easiest way, “that I am lapsing 
into the freemasonry of the craft, — for 
it ’s not so ; upon my life I can’t help 
betraying it wherever I go, though, by 
Jupiter, I love and honor the craft with 
all my might, — if I propose a stipula- 
tion as to time and place?” 

Ha ! Mr. Dorrit could erect no — 
hum — suspicion of that kind, on Mr. 
Gowan’s frankness. 

“ Again, you are very good,” said 
Gowan. “ Mr. Dorrit, 1 hear you are 
going to Rome. I am going to Rome, 
having friends there. Let me begin to 
do you the injustice I have conspired to 
do you, there, — not here. We shall 
all be hurried during the rest of our 
stay here ; and though there ’s not a 
poorer man with whole elbmvs in Ven- 
ice than myself, I have quite got 
all the Amateur out of me yet, — com- 
promising the trade again, you see ! — 
and can’t fall on to order, in a hurry, 
for the mere sake of the sixpences.” 

These remarks were not less favora- 
bly received by Mr. Dorrit than their 
predecessors. They were the prelude 
to the first reception of Mr. and Mrs. 
Gowan at dinner, and they skilfully 
placed Gowan on his usual ground in 
the new family. 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


295 


His wife, too, they placed on her 
usual ground. Miss F anny understood, 
with particular distinctness, that Mrs. 
Gowan’s good looks had cost her hus- 
band very dear ; that there had been a 
great disturbance about her in the 
Barnacle family ; and that the Dow- 
ager Mrs. Gowan, nearly heart-broken, 
had resolutely set her face against the 
marriage until overpowered by her 
maternal feelings. Mrs. General like- 
wise clearly understood that the attach- 
ment had occasioned much family 
grief and dissension. Of honest Mr. 
M eagles no mention w'as made ; except 
that it was natural enough that a person 
of that sort should wish to raise his 
daughter out of his own obscurity, and 
that no one could blame him for trying 
his best to do so. 

Little Dorrit’s interest in the fair 
subject of this easily accepted belief 
was too earnest and watchful to fail in 
accurate observation. She could see 
that it had its part in throwing upon 
Mrs. Gowan the touch of shadow under 
which she lived, and she even had an 
instinctive knowledge that there was 
not the least truth in it. But it had an 
influence in placing obstacles in the 
w r ay of her association with Mrs. Gow- 
an, by making the Prunes and Prism 
school excessively polite to her, but not 
very intimate with her ; and Little 
Dorrit, as an enforced sizar of that col- 
lege, was obliged to submit herself 
humbly to its ordinances. 

Nevertheless, there was a sympathet- 
ic understanding already established 
between the two, which would have 
carried them over greater difficulties, 
and made a friendship out of a more 
restricted intercourse. As though ac- 
cidents were determined to be favorable 
' to it, they had a new assurance of con- 
geniality in the aversion which each 
perceived that the other felt towards 
Blandois of Paris ; an aversion amount- 
ing to the repugnance and horror of a 
natural antipathy towards an odious 
creature of the reptile kind. 

And there was a passive congeniality 
between them, besides this active one. 
To both of them, Blandois behaved in 
exactly the same manner ; and to both 
of them his manner had uniformly 


something in it which they both knew 
to be different from his bearing towards 
others. The difference was too minute 
in its expression to be perceived by 
others, but they knew it to be there. 
A mere trick of his evil eyes, a mere 
turn of his smooth white hand, a mere 
hair’s-breadth of addition to the fall of 
his nose and the rise of the mustache 
in the most frequent movement of his 
face, conveyed to both of them equally 
a swagger personal to themselves. It 
was as if he had said, “ I have a secret 
power in this quarter. I know what I 
know.” 

This had never been felt by them 
both in so great a degree, and never by 
each so perfectly to the knowledge of 
the other, as on a day when he came to 
Mr. Dorrit’s to take his leave before 
quitting Venice. Mrs. Gowan was her- 
self there for the same purpose, and he 
came upon the. two together, the rest 
of the family being out. The two had 
not been together five minutes, and the 
peculiar manner seemed to convey to 
them, “You were going to talk about 
me. Hah ! Behold me here to pre- 
vent it ! ” 

“Gowan is coming here?” said 
Blandois, with a smile. 

Mrs. Gowan replied he was not com- 
ing- 

“ Not coming ! ” said Blandois. 
“ Permit your devoted servant, when 
you leave here, to escort you home.” 

“ Thank you ; I am not going home.” 

“ Not going home ! ” said Blandois. 
“ Then I am forlorn.” 

That he might be ; but he was not so 
forlorn as to roam away and leave them 
together. He sat entertaining them 
with his finest compliments, and his 
choicest conversation ; but he conveyed 
to them, all the time, “No, no, no, dear 
ladies. Behold me here expressly to 
prevent it ! ” 

He conveyed it to them with so much 
meaning, and he had such a diabolical 
persistency in him, that at length Mrs. 
Gowan rose to depart. On his offering 
his hand to Mrs. Gowan to lead her 
down the staircase, she retained Little 
Dorrit’s hand in hers, with a cautious 
pressure, and said, “No, thank you. 
But if you will please to see if my 


296 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


boatman is there, I shall be obliged to 
you.” 

It left him no choice but to go down 
before them. As he did so, hat in 
hand, Mrs. Gowan whispered, — 

“He killed the dog.” 

“Does Mr. Gowan know it?” Little 
Dorrit whispered. 

“ No one knows it. Don’t look to- 
wards me ; look towards him. He will 
turn his face in a moment. No one 
knows it, but I am sure he did. You 
are ? ” 

“I — I think so,” Little Dorrit an- 
swered. 

“ Henry likes him, and will not think 
ill of him ; he is so generous and open 
himself. But you and I feel sure that 
we think of him as he deserves. He 
argued with Henry that the dog had 
been already poisoned when he changed 
so, and sprung at him. Henry believes 
it, but we do not. I see he is listening, 
but can’t hear. Good by, my love ! 
Good by ! ” 

The last words were spoken aloud, 
as the vigilant Blandois stopped, turned 
his head, and looked at them from the 
bottom of the staircase. Assuredly he 
did look then, though he looked his 
politest, as if any real philanthropist 
could have desired no better employ- 
ment than to lash a great stone to his 
neck, and drop him into the water flow- 
ing beyond the dark arched gateway in 
which he stood. No such benefactor 
to mankind being on the spot, he hand- 
ed Mrs. Gowan to her boat, and stood 
there until it had shot out of the narrow 
view ; when he handed himself into his 
own boat and followed. 

Little Dorrit had sometimes thought, 
and now thought again as she retraced 
her steps up the staircase, that he had 
made his way too easily into her father’s 
house. But so many and such varie- 
ties of people did the same, through 
Mr. Dorrit’s participation in his elder 
daughter’s society mania, that it was 
hardly an exceptional case. A perfect 
fury for making acquaintances on whom 
to impress their riches and importance 
had seized the House of Dorrit. 

It appeared, on the whole, to Little 
Dorrit herself, that this same society 
in which they lived greatly resembled 


a superior sort of Marshalsea. , Num- 
bers of people seemed to come abroad, 
pretty much as people had come into 
the prison ; through debt, through idle- 
ness, relationship, curiosity, and general 
unfitness for getting on at home. They 
were brought into these foreign towns 
in the custody of couriers and local 
followers, just as the debtors had been 
brought into the prison.. They prowled 
about the churches^ and picture-galler- 
ies, much in the old, dreary prison-yard 
manner. They were usually going away 
again to-morrow or next week, and rare- 
ly knew their own minds, and seldom 
did what they said they would do, or 
went where they said they would 
go ; in all this, again, very like the pris- 
on debtors. They paid high for poor 
accommodation, and disparaged a place 
while they pretended to like it ; which 
was exactly the Marshalsea custom. 
They were envied when they went 
away, by people left behind feigning 
not to want to go ; and that again was 
the Marshalsea habit invariably. A cer- 
tain set of words and phrases, as much 
belonging to tourists as the College 
and the Snuggery belonged to the jail, 
was always in their mouths. They had 
precisely the same incapacity for set- 
tling down to anything as the prisoners 
used to have ; they rather deteriorated 
one another, as the prisoners used to 
do ; and they wore untidy dresses, and 
fell into a slouching way of life : still, 
always like the people in the Marshal- 
sea. 

The period of the family’s stay at 
Venice came, in its course, to an end, 
and they moved, with their retinue, to 
Rome. Through a repetition of the 
former Italian scenes, growing more 
dirty and more haggard as they went 
on, and bringing them at length to 
where the very air was diseased, they 
passed to their destination. A fine 
residence had been taken for them on 
the Corso, and there they took up their 
abode, in a city where everything 
seemed to be trying to stand still for- 
ever on the ruins of something else, — 
except the water, which, following eter- 
nal laws, tumbled and rolled from its 
glorious multitude of fountains. 

Here, it seemed to Little Dorrit that 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


297 


a change came over the Marshalsea 
spirit of their society, and that Prunes 
and Prism got the upper hand. Every- 
body was walking about St. Peter’s and 
the Vatican on somebody else’s cork 
legs, and straining every visible object 
through somebody else’s sieve. No- 
body said what anything was, but ev- 
erybody said what the Mrs. Generals, 
Mr. Eustace, or somebody else said it 
was. The whole body of travellers 
seemed to be a collection of voluntary 
human sacrifices, bound hand and foot, 
and delivered over to Mr. Eustace and 
his attendants, to have the entrails of 
their intellects arranged according to 
' the taste of that sacred priesthood. 
Through the rugged remains of temples 
and tombs and palaces and senate 
halls, and cheatres and amphitheatres 
of ancient days, hosts of tongue-tied 
and blindfolded moderns were carefully 
feeling their way, incessantly repeating 
Prunes and Prism, in the endeavor to 
set their lips according to the received 
form. Mrs. General was in her pure 
element. Nobody had an opinion. 
There was a formation of surface going 
on around her on an amazing scale, 
and it had not a flaw of courage or 
honest free speech in it. 

Another modification of Prunes and 
Prism insinuated itself on Little Dorrit’s 
notice very shortly after their arrival. 
They received an early visit from Mrs. 
Merdle, who led that extensive depart- 
ment of life in the Eternal City that 
winter ; and the skilful manner in which 
she and Fanny fenced with one another 
on the occasion almost made her quiet 
sister wink, like the glittering of small 
swords. 

“ So delighted,” said Mrs. Merdle, 
“ to resume an acquaintance so inau- 
spiciously begun at Martigny.” 

“At Martigny, of course,” said Fan- 
ny. “ Charmed, I am sure ! ” 

“ I understand,” said Mrs. Merdle, 
“ from my son Edmund Sparkler, that 
he has already improved that chance 
occasion. He has returned quite trans- 
ported with Venice.” 

“Indeed?” returned the careless 
Fanny. “Was he there long?” 

“ I might refer that question to Mr. 
Dorrit,” said Mrs. Merdle, turning the 


bosom towards that gentleman ; “ Ed- 
mund having been so much indebted to 
him for rendering his stay agreeable.” 

“ O, pray don’t speak of it,” returned 
Fanny. “ I believe papa had the pleas- 
ure of inviting Mr. Sparkler twice or 
thrice, — but it was nothing. We had 
so many people about us, and kept such 
open house, that if he had that pleasure, 
it was less than nothing.” 

“ Except, my dear,” said Mr. Dorrit, 
“ except — ha — as it afforded me un- 
usual gratification to — hum — show by 
any means, however slight and worth- 
less, the — ha hum — high estimation in 
which, in — ha — common with the 
rest of the world, I hold so distiia- 
guished and princely a character as Mr. 
Merdle’s.” 

The bosom received this tribute in its 
most engaging manner. “ Mr. Mer- 
dle,” observed Fanny, as a means of 
dismissing Mr. Sparkler into the back- 
ground, “ is quite a theme of papa’s, you 
must know, Mrs. Merdle.” _ 

“ I have been — ha — disappointed, 
madam,” said Mr. Dorrit, “ to under- 
stand from Mr. Sparkler that there is no 
great — hum — probability of Mr. Mer- 
dle’s coming abroad.” 

“ Why, indeed,” said Mrs. Merdle, 
“he is so much engaged, and in such re- 
quest, that I fear not. He has not been 
able to get abroad for years. You, Miss 
Dorrit, I believe, have been almost con- 
tinually abroad for a long time.” 

“ O dear, yes,” drawled Fanny, with 
the greatest hardihood. “ An immense 
number of years.” 

“So I should have inferred,” said 
-Mrs. Merdle. 

“ Exactly,” said Fanny. 

“ I trust, however,” resumed Mr. 
Dorrit, “that if I have not the — hum 
— great advantage of becoming known 
to Mr. Merdle on this side of the Alps 
or Mediterranean, I shall have that 
honor on returning to England. It is 
an honor I particularly desire and shall 
particularly esteem.” 

“ Mr. Merdle,” said Mrs. Merdle, 
who had been looking admiringly at 
Fanny through her eye-glass, “will es- 
teem it, I am sure, no less.” 

Little Dorrit, still habitually thought- 
ful and solitary, though no longer alone, 


298 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


at first supposed this to be mere Prunes 
and Prism. But as her father, when 
they had been to a brilliant reception at 
Mrs. Merdle’s, harped, at their own fam- 
ily breakfast-table, on his wish to know 
Mr. Merdle, with the contingent view 
of benefiting by the advice of that won- 
derful man in the disposal of his fortune, 
she began to. think it had a real mean- 
ing, and to entertain a curiosity on her 
own part to see the shining light of the 
time. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

THE DOWAGER MRS. GOWAN IS RE- 
MINDED THAT IT NEVER DOES. 

While the waters of Venice and the 
ruins of Rome were sunning themselves 
for the pleasure of the Dorrit family, 
and were daily being sketched out of 
all earthly proportion, lineament, and 
likeness by travelling-pencils innumer- 
able, the firm of Doyce and Clennam 
hammered away in Bleeding Heart 
Yard, and the vigorous clink of iron 
upon iron was heard there through the 
working-hours. 

The younger partner had, by this 
time, brought the business into sound 
trim ; and the elder, left free to follow 
his own ingenious devices, had done 
much to enhance the character of the 
factory. As an ingenious man, he had 
necessarily to encounter every discour- 
agement that the ruling powers for a 
length of time had been able by t any 
means to put in the way of his class of 
culprits ; but that was only reasonable 
self-defence in the powers, since How 
to do it, must obviously be regarded as 
the natural and mortal enemy of How 
not to do it. In this was to be found 
the basis of the wise system by tooth 
and nail upheld by the Circumlocution 
Office, of warning every ingenious Brit- 
ish subject to be ingenious at his peril : 
of harassing him, obstructing him, in- 
viting robbers (by making his remedy 
uncertain, difficult, and expensive) to 
plunder him, and at the best of confis- 
cating his property after a short term of 
enjoyment, as though invention were 
on a par with felony. The system had 


uniformly found great favor with the 
Barnacles, and that was only reasonable 
too ; for one who worthily invents must 
be in earnest, and the Barnacles ab- 
horred and dreaded nothing half so 
much. That again was very reasona- 
ble ; since in a country suffering under 
the affliction of a great amount of ear- 
nestness, there might, in an exceeding 
short space of time, be not a single 
Barnacle left sticking to a post. 

Daniel Doyce faced his condition with 
its pains and penalties attached to it, 
and soberly worked on for the work’s 
sake. Clennam, cheering him with a 
hearty co-operation, was a moral support 
to him, besides doing good service in 
his business relation. The concern 
prospered, and the partners were fast 
friends. 

But Daniel could not forget the old 
design of so many years. It was not in 
reason to be expected that he should ; 
if he could have lightly forgotten it, he 
could never have conceived it, or had 
the patience and perseverance to work 
it out. So Clennam thought, when he 
sometimes observed him of an evening 
looking over the models and drawings, 
and consoling himself by muttering 
with a sigh as he put them away again, 
that the thing was as true as it ever was. 

To show no sympathy with so much 
endeavor, and so much disappointment, 
would have been to fail in what Clennam 
regarded as among the implied obliga- 
tions of his partnership. A revival of 
the passing interest in the subject which 
had been by chance awakened at the 
door of the Circumlocution Office 
originated in this feeling. He asked 
his partner to explain the invention to 
him ; “ having a lenient consideration,” 
he stipulated, “for my being no work- 
man, Doyce.” 

“No workman ? ” said Doyce. “ You 
would have been a thorough workman 
if you had given yourself to it. You 
have as good a head for understanding 
such things as I have met with.” 

“A totally uneducated one, I am 
Sony to add,” said Clennam. 

“ I don’t know that,” returned 
Doyce, “ and I would n’t have you say 
that. No man of sense who has been 
generally improved, and has improved 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


299 


himself, can be called quite uneducated 
as to anything. I don’t particularly 
favor mysteries. I would as soon, on a 
fair and clear explanation, be judged by 
one class of man as another, provided 
he had the qualification I have named.” 

“At all events,” said Clennam, — 
“ this sounds as if we were exchanging 
compliments, but we know we are not, 

— I shall have the advantage of as 
plain an explanation as can be given.” 

“ Well ! ” said Daniel, in his steady, 
even way, “ I ’ll try to make it so.” 

He had the power, often to be found 
in union with such a character, of ex- 
plaining what he himself perceived, 
and meant, with the direct force and 
distinctness with which it struck his 
own mind. His manner of demonstra- 
tion was so orderly and neat and simple, 
that it was not easy to mistake him. 
There was something almost ludicrous 
in the complete irreconcilability of a 
vague conventional notion that he must 
be a visionary man, with -the precise, 
sagacious travelling of his eye and 
thumb over the plans, their patient stop- 
pages at particular points, their careful 
returns to other points whence little 
channels of explanation had to be traced 
up, and his steady manner of making 
everything good and everything sound, 
at each important stage, before taking 
his hearer on a line’s-breadth further. 
His dismissal of himself from his descrip- 
tion, was hardly less remarkable. He 
never said, I discovered this adaptation 
or invented that combination ; but 
showed the whole thing as if the Di- 
vine Artificer had made it, and he had 
happened to find it. So modest he was 
about it, such a pleasant touch of respect 
was mingled with his quiet admiration 
of it, and so calmly convinced he was 
that it was established on irrefragable 
laws. 

Not only that evening, but for sever- 
al succeeding evenings, Clennam was 
quite charmed by this investigation. 
The more he pursued it, and the oftener 
he glanced at the gray head bending 
over it, and the shrewd eye kindling 
with pleasure in it and love of it, — 
instrument for probing his heart though 
it had been made for twelve long years, 

— the less he could reconcile it to his 


younger energy to let it go without 
one effort more. At length he said, — 

“ Doyce, it came to this at last, — 
that the business was to be sunk with 
Heaven knows how many more wrecks, 
or begun all over again ? ” 

“Yes,” returned Doyce, “that’s what 
the noblemen and gentlemen made of 
it after a dozen years.” 

“ And pretty fellows too ! ” said Clen- 
nam, bitterly. 

“ The usual thing ! ” observed Doyce. 
“ I must not make a martyr of myself, 
when I am one of so large a company.” 

“ Relinquish it, or begin it all over 
again ? ” mused Clennam. 

“ That was exactly the long and the 
short of it,” said Doyce. 

“Then, my friend,” cried Clennam, 
starting up, and taking his work-rough- 
ened hand, “ it shall be begun all over 
again ! ” 

Doyce looked alarmed, and replied, 
in a hurry — for him, “ No, no. Better 
put it by. Far better put it by. It 
will be heard of, one day. I can put it 
by. You forget, my good Clennam; 
I have put it by. It ’s all at an end.” 

“ Yes, Doyce,” returned Clennam, 
“at an end as far as your efforts and 
rebuffs are concerned, I admit, but not 
as far as mine are. 1 am younger than 
you ; I have only once set foot in that 
precious office, and I am fresh game 
for them. Come ! I ’ll try them. You 
shall do exactly as you have been doing 
since we have been together. I will 
add (as I easily can) to what - 1 have 
been doing the attempt to get public 
justice done to you ; and, unless I have 
some success to report, you shall hear 
no more of it.” 

Daniel Doyce was still reluctant to 
consent, and again and again urged that 
they had better put it by. But it was 
natural that he should gradually allow 
himself to be overpersuaded by Clen- 
nam, and should yield. Yield he did. 
So Arthur resumed the long and hope- 
less labor of striving to make way with 
the Circumlocution Office. 

The waiting-rooms of that depart- 
ment soon began to be familiar with 
his presence, and he was generally ush- 
ered into them by its janitors, much as 
a pickpocket might be shown into a 


300 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


olice-office ; the principal difference 
eing that the object of the latter class 
of public business is to keep the pick- 
pocket, while the Circumlocution object 
was to get rid of Clennam. However, 
he was resolved to stick to the Great 
Department ; and so the work of form- 
filling, corresponding, minuting, memo- 
randum-making, signing, counter-sign- 
ing, counter-counter-signing backwards 
and forwards, and referring sideways, 
crosswise, and zigzag, recommenced. 

Here arises a feature of the Circum- 
locution Office not previously men- 
tioned in the present record. When 
that admirable Department got into 
trouble, and was, by some infuriated 
member of Parliament, whom the 
smaller Barnacles almost suspected of 
laboring under diabolic possession, at- 
tacked, on the merits of no individual 
case, but as an Institution wholly 
abominable and Bedlamite ; then the 
noble or right honorable Barnacle who 
represented it in the House would 
smite that member and cleave him 
asunder, w’ith a statement of the quan- 
tity of business (for the prevention of 
business) done by the Circumlocution 
Office. Then would that noble or right 
honorable Barnacle hold in his hand a 
paper containing a few figures, to which, 
with the permission of the House, he 
would entreat its attention. Then 
would the inferior Barnacles exclaim, 
obeying orders, “Hear, Hear, Hear ! ” 
and “Read ! ” Then would the noble 
or right honorable Barnacle perceive, 
sir, from this little document, which he 
thought might carry conviction even to 
the perversest mind (Derisive laughter 
and cheering from the Barnacle fry), 
that within the short compass of the 
last financial half-year, this much ma- 
ligned Department (Cheers) had written 
and received fifteen thousand letters 
(Loud cheers), twenty-four thousand 
minutes (Louder cheers), and thirty-two 
thousand five hundred and seventeen 
memoranda (Vehement cheering). Nay, 
an ingenious gentleman connected with 
the Department, and himself a valuable 
public servant, had done him the favor 
to make a curious calculation of the 
amount of stationery consumed in it 
during the same period. It formed a 


part of this same short document ; and 
he derived from it the remarkable fact, 
that the sheets of foolscap paper it had 
devoted to the public service would 
pave the footways on both sides of Ox- 
ford Street from end to end, and leave 
nearly a quarter of a mile to spare for 
the park (Immense cheering and laugh- 
ter) ; while of tape — red tape — it had 
used enough to stretch in graceful fes- 
toons from Hyde Park Corner to the 
General Post-Office. Then, amidst a 
burst of official exultation, would the 
noble or right honorable Barnacle sit 
down, leaving the mutilated fragments 
of the Member on the field. No one, 
after that exemplary demolition of him, 
would have the hardihood to hint that 
the more the Circumlocution Office did, 
the less was done, and that the greatest 
blessing it could confer on an unhappy 
public would be to do nothing. 

With sufficient occupation on his 
hands, now that he had this additional 
task, — such a task had many and many 
a serviceable man died of before his day, 
— Arthur Clennam led a life of slight 
variety. Regular visits to his mother’s 
dull sick-room, and visits scarcely less 
regular to Mr. Meagles at Twickenham, 
were its only changes during many 
months. 

He sadly and sorely missed Little 
Dorrit. He had been prepared to miss 
her very much, but not so much. He 
knew to the full extent only through 
experience what a large place in his life 
was left blank when her familiar little 
figure went out of it. He felt, too, that 
he must relinquish the hope of its re- 
turn, understanding the family character 
sufficiently well to be assured that he 
and she were divided by a broad ground 
of separation. The old interest he had 
had in her, and her old trusting reliance 
on him, were tinged with melancholy in 
his mind : so soon had change stolen 
over them, and so soon had they glided 
into the past with other secret tender- 
nesses. 

When he received her letter he was 
greatly moved, but did not the less sen- 
sibly feel that she was far divided from 
him by more than distance. It helped 
him to a clearer and keener perception 
of the place assigned him by the family. 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


He saw that he was cherished in her 
grateful remembrance secretly, and that 
they resented him with the jail and the 
rest of its belongings. 

Through all these meditations which 
every day of his life crowded about her, 
he thought of her otherwise in the old 
way. She was his innocent friend, his 
delicate child, his dear Little Dorrit. 
This very change of circumstances fitted 
curiously in with the habit, begun on 
the night when the roses floated away, 
of considering himself as a much older 
man than his years really made him. 
He regarded her from a point of view 
which in its remoteness, tender as it was, 
he little thought would have been un- 
speakable agony to her. He speculated 
about her future destiny, and about the 
husband she might have, with an affec- 
tion, for her which would have drained 
her heart of its dearest drop of hope, 
and broken it. 

Everything about him tended to con- 
firm him in the custom of looking on 
himself as an elderly man, from whom 
such aspirations as he had combated in 
the case of Minnie Gowan (though that 
was not so long ago either, reckoning 
by months and seasons), _ were finally 
departed. His relations with her father 
and mother were like those on which a 
widower son-in-law might have stood. 
If the twin sister, who was dead, had 
lived to pass away in the bloom of wo- 
manhood, and he had been her hus- 
band, the nature of his intercourse with 
Mr. and Mrs. Meagles would probably 
have been just what it was. This im- 
perceptibly helped to render habitual 
the impression within him that he had 
done with, and dismissed, that part of 
life. 

He invariably heard of Minnie from 
them, as telling them in her letters how 
happy she was, and how she loved her 
husband ; but inseparable from that 
subject, he invariably saw the old cloud 
on Mr. Meagles’s face. Mr. Meagles 
had never been quite so radiant since 
the marriage as before. He had never 
quite recovered the separation from Pet. 
He was the same good-humored, open 
creature ; but as if his face, from being 
much turned towards the pictures of his 
two children which could show him only 


3or 

one look, unconsciously adopted a char- 
acteristic from them, it always had now, 
through all its changes of expression, a 
look of loss in it. 

One wintry Saturday when Clennam 
was at the cottage, the Dowager Mrs. 
Gowan drove up, in the Hampton 
Court equipage which pretended to be 
the exclusive equipage of so many in- 
dividual proprietors. She descended, 
in her shady ambuscade of green fan, 
to favor Mr. and Mrs. Meagles with a 
call. 

“ And how do you both do, Papa and 
Mamma Meagles?” said she, encour- 
aging her humble connections. “And 
when did you last hear from or about 
my poor fellow?” 

My poor fellow was her son ; and this 
mode of speaking of him politely kept 
alive, without any offence in the world, 
the pretence that he had fallen a victim 
to the Meagles’ wiles. 

“And the dear pretty one?” said 
Mrs. Gowan. “ Have you later news 
of her than I have? ” 

Which also delicately implied that 
her son had been captured by mere 
beauty, and under its fascination had 
foregone all sorts of worldly advan- 
tages. 

“Iam sure,” said Mrs. Gowan, with- 
out straining her attention on the an- 
swers she received, “it’s an unspeak- 
able comfort to know they continue 
happ}'. My poor fellow is of such a 
restless disposition, and has been so 
used to roving about, and to being in- 
constant and popular among all manner 
of people, that it ’s the greatest comfort 
in life. I suppose they ’re as poor as 
mice, Papa Meagles?” 

Mr. Meagles, fidgety under the ques- 
tion, replied, “I hope not, ma’am. I 
hope they will manage their little in- 
come.” 

“O my dearest Meagles!” returned 
that lady, tapping him on the arm with 
the green fan, and then adroitly inter- 
posing it between a yawn and the com- 
pany, “how can you, as a man of the 
world and one of the most business-like 
of human beings, — for you know you 
are business-like, and a great deal too 
much for us who are not — ” 

(Which went to the former purpose 


302 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


by making Mr. Meagles out to be an 
artful schemer.) 

“ — How can you talk about their 
managing their little means? My poor 
dear fellow ! The idea of his managing 
hundreds ! And the sweet pretty crea- 
ture too. The notion of her managing ! 
Papa Meagles ! Don’t ! ” 

“Well, ma’am,” said Mr. Meagles, 
gravely, “ I am sorry to admit, then, 
that Henry certainly does anticipate his 
means.” 

“My dear good man — I use no cer- 
emony with you, because we are a kind 
of relations ; — positively. Mamma Mea- 
gles,” exclaimed Mrs. Gowan, cheer- 
fully, as if the absurd coincidence then 
flashed upon her for the first time, “ a 
kind of relations ! My dear good man, 
in this world none of us can have every- 
thing our own way.” 

This again went to the former point, 
and showed Mr. Meagles with all good 
breeding that, so far, he had been bril- 
liantly successful in his deep designs. 
Mrs. Gowan thought the hit so good a 
one, that she dwelt upon it ; repeating, 
“Not everything. No, no; in this 
world we must not expect everything , 
Papa. Meagles.” 

“And may I ask, ma’am,” retorted 
Mr. Meagles, a little heightened in 
color, “who does expect everything?” 

“ O, nobody, nobody ! ” said Mrs. 
Gowan. “I was going to say — but 
you put me out. You interrupting 
Papa, what was I going to say ! ” 

Drooping her large green fan, she 
looked musingly at Mr. Meagles while 
she thought about it ; a performance 
not tending to the cooling of that gen- 
tleman’s rather heated spirits. 

“Ah! Yes, to be sure!” said Mrs. 
Gowan. “You must remember that 
my poor fellow has always been accus- 
tomed to expectations. They may have 
been realized, or they may not have 
been realized — ” 

“ Let us say, then, may not have 
been realized,” observed Mr. Meagles. 

The Dowager for a moment gave him 
an angry look ; but tossed it off with 
her head and her fan, and pursued the 
tenor of her way in her former manner. 

“ It makes no difference. My poor 
fellow has been accustomed to that 


sort of thing, and of course you knew 
it, and were prepared for the conse- 
quences. I myself always clearly fore- 
saw the consequences, and am not sur- 
prised. And you must not be surprised. 
In fact, can’t be surprised. Must have 
been prepared for it.” 

Mr. Meagles looked at his wife, and 
at Clennam, bit his lip, and coughed. 

“ And now here ’s my poor fellow,” 
Mrs. Gowan pursued, “ receiving notice 
that he is to hold himself in expectation 
of a baby, and all the expenses attend- 
ant on such an addition to his family ! 
Poor Henry ! But it can’t be helped 
now : it ’s too late to help it now. Only 
don’t talk of anticipating means, Papa 
Meagles, as a discovery ; because that 
w T ould be too much.” 

“Too much, ma’am?” said Mr. 
Meagles, as seeking an explanation. 

“ There, there ! ” said Mrs. Gowan, 
putting him in his inferior place with 
an expressive action of her hand. “ Too 
much for my poor fellow’s mother to 
bear at this time of day. They are fast 
married, and can’t be unmarried. There, 
there! I know that! You needn’t 
tell me that, Papa Meagles. I know it 
very well. What was it I said just 
now? That it was a great comfort they 
continued happy. It is to be hoped 
they will still continue happy. It is. to 
be hoped Pretty One will do everything 
she can to make my poor fellow happy, 
and keep him contented. Papa and 
Mamma Meagles, we had better say 
no more about it. We never did look 
at this subject from the same side, and 
we never shall. There, there ! Now 
I am good.” 

Truly, having by this time said every- 
thing she could say in maintenance of 
her wonderfully mythical position, and 
in admonition to Mr. Meagles that he 
must not expect to bear his honors of 
alliance too cheaply, Mrs. Gowan was 
disposed to forego the rest. If Mr. 
Meagles had submitted to a glance of 
entreaty from Mrs. Meagles, and an 
expressive gesture from Clennam, he 
would have left her in the undisturbed 
enjoyment of this state of mind. But 
Pet was the darling and pride of his 
heart ; and if he could ever have cham- 
pioned her more devotedly, or loved 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


303 


her better, than in the days when she 
was the sunlight of his house, it would 
have been now, when, in its daily grace 
and delight, she was lost to it. 

“ Mrs. Gowan, ma’am,” said Mr. 
Meagles, “ I have been a plain man all 
my life. If I was to try — no matter 
whether on myself, on somebody else, 
or both — any genteel mystifications, I 
should probably not succeed in them.” 

“Papa Meagles,” returned the Dow- 
ager, with an affable smile, but with 
the bloom on her cheeks standing out 
a little more vividly than usual as the 
neighboring surface became paler, 
“probably not.” 

“Therefore, my good madam,” said 
Mr. Meagles, at great pains to restrain 
himself, “ I hope I may, without offence, 
ask to have no such mystifications played 
off upon me.” 

“Mamma Meagles,” observed Mrs. 
Gowan, “your good man is incompre- 
hensible.” 

Her turning to that worthy lady was 
an artifice to bring her into the discus- 
sion, quarrel with her, and vanquish 
her. Mr. Meagles interposed to pre- 
vent that consummation. 

“Mother,” said he, “you are inex- 
pert, my dear, and it is not a fair match. 
Let me beg of you to remain quiet. 
Come, Mrs. Gowan, come ! Let us try 
to be sensible ; let us try to be good- 
natured ; let us try to be fair. Don’t 
you pity Henry, and I won’t pity Pet. 
And don’t be one-sided, my dear mad- 
am ; it ’s not considerate, it ’s not kind. 
Don’t let us say that we hope Pet will 
make Henry happy, or even that we 
hope Henry will make Pet happy,” 
(Mr. Meagles himself did not look hap- 
py as he spoke the words,) “but let us 
hope they will make each other happy.” 

“Yes, sure, and there leave it, fa- 
ther,” said Mrs. Meagles, the kind- 
hearted and comfortable. 

“ Why, mother, no,” returned Mr. 
Meagles, “not exactly there. I can’t 
quite leave it there ; I must say just 
half a dozen words more. Mrs. Gow- 
an, I hope I am not over-sensirtve. 
I believe I don’t look it.” 

“ Indeed you do not,” said Mrs. Gow- 
an, shaking her head and the great 
green fan together, for emphasis. 


“ Thank you, ma’am ; that ’s well. 
Notwithstanding which, I feel a little 
— I don’t want to use a strong word — 
now shall I say hurt?” asked Mr. 
Meagles at once with frankness ar.d 
moderation, and with a conciliatory 
appeal in his tone. 

“ Say what you like,” answered Mrs. 
Gowan. “ It is perfectly indifferent to 
me.” 

“ No, no, don’t say that,” urged Mr. 
Meagles, “ because that ’s not respond- 
ing amiably. I feel a little hurt, when 
I hear references made to consequences 
having been foreseen, and to its being 
too late now, and so forth.” 

“ Do you, Papa Meagles ? ” said 
Mrs. Gowan. “I am not surprised.” 

“ Well, ma’am,” reasoned Mr. Mea- 
gles, “ I was in hopes you would have 
been at Jeast surprised, because to hurt 
me wilfully on so tender a subject is 
surely not generous.” 

“ I am not responsible,” said Mrs. 
Gowan, “ for your conscience, you 
know.” 

Poor Mr. Meagles looked aghast with 
astonishment. 

“ If I am unluckily obliged to carry a 
cap about with me which is yours and 
fits you,” pursued Mrs. Gowan, “ don’t 
blame me for its pattern, Papa Mea- 
gles, I beg ! ” 

“ Why, good Lord, ma’am ! ” Mr. 
Meagles broke out, “ that ’s as much as 
to state — ” 

“Now, Papa Meagles, Papa Mea- 
gles,” said Mrs. Gowan, who became ex- 
tremely deliberate and prepossessing in 
manner whenever that gentleman be- 
came at all warm, “perhaps, to prevent 
confusion, I had better speak for myself 
than trouble your kindness to speak for 
me. It ’s as much as to state, you be- 
gin. If you please, I will finish the 
sentence. .It is as much as to state, — 
not that I wish to press it, or even re- 
call it, for it is of no use now, and my 
only wish is to make the best of exist- 
ing circumstances, — that from the first 
to the last I always objected to this 
match of yours, and at a very late period 
yielded a most unwilling consent to it.” 

“ Mother ! ” cried Mr. Meagtes. “ Do 
you hear this ! Arthur ! Do you hear 
this ! ” 


304 


LITTLE JDORRIT. 


“ The room being of a convenient 
size,” said Mrs. Gowan, looking about 
as she fanned herself, “and quite charm- 
ingly adapted in all respects to conver- 
sation, I should imagine that I am audi- 
ble in any part of it.” 

Some moments passed in silence, be- 
fore Mr. Meagles could hold himself 
in his chair with sufficient security to 
prevent his breaking out of it at the 
next word he spoke. At last he said : 
“ Ma’am, I am very unwilling to revive 
them, but I must remind you what my 
opinions and my course were, all along, 
on that unfortunate subject.” 

“ O my dear sir ! ” said Mrs. Gowan, 
smiling and shaking her head with ac- 
cusatory intelligence, “ they were well 
understood by me, I assure you.” 

“ I never, ma’am,” said Mr. Meagles, 
“ knew unhappiness before that time, I 
never knew anxiety before that time. 
It was a time of such distress to me, 
that — ” That Mr. Meagles really 
could say no more about it, in short, but 
passed his handkerchief before his face. 

“ I understood the whole affair,” said 
Mrs. Gowan, composedly looking over 
her fan. “ As you have appealed to Mr. 
Clennam, I may appeal to Mr. Clen- 
nam, too. He knows whether I did or 
not.” 

“ I am very unwilling,” said Clen- 
nam, looked to by all parties, “ to take 
any share in this discussion, more espe- 
cially because I wish to preserve the 
best understanding and the clearest 
relations w'ith Mr. Henry Gow r an. I 
have very strong reasons indeed for en- 
tertaining that wish. Mrs. Gowran at- 
tributed certain views of furthering the 
marriage to my friend here, in conver- 
sation with me before it took place ; 
and I endeavored to undeceive her. I 
represented that I knew him (as I did 
and do) to be strenuously opposed to it, 
both in opinion and action.” 

“You see? ” said Mrs. Gowan, turn- 
ing the palms of her hands towards Mr. 
Meagles, as if she were Justice herself, 
representing to him that he had better 
confess, for he had not a leg to stand 
on. “You see? Very good! Now', 
Papa anchMamma Meagles both ! ” here 
she rose ; “ allow' me to take the liberty 
of putting an end to this rather formi- 


dable controversy. I will not say an- 
other word upon its merits. I will only 
say that it is an additional proof of what 
one knows from all experience ; that 
this kind of thing never answers, — as 
my poor fellow himself would say, that 
it never pays, — in one word, that it 
never does.” 

Mr. Meagles asked, What kind of 
thing ? 

“ It is in vain,” said Mrs. Gowan, 
“for people to attempt to get on to- 
gether who have such extremely dif- 
ferent antecedents ; who are jumbled 
against each other in this accidental, 
matrimonial sort of way ; and who can- 
not look at the untoward circumstance 
which has shaken them together, in the 
same light. It never does.” 

“ Mr. Meagles was beginning, “ Per- 
mit me to say, ma’am — ” 

“No, don’t ! ” returned Mrs. Gowan. 
“ Why should you ! It is an ascertained 
fact. It never does. I will therefore, 
if you please, go my way, leaving you to 
yours. I shall at all times be happy to 
receive my poor fellow’s pretty wife, 
and I shall always make a point of 
being on the most affectionate terms 
with her. But as to these terms, semi- 
family and semi-stranger, semi-goring 
and sembboring, they form a state of 
things quite amusing in its impractica- 
bility. I assure you it never does.” 

The Dow'ager here made a smiling 
obeisance, rather to the room than to 
any one in it, and therewith took a final 
farewell of Papa and Mamma Meagles. 
Clennam stepped forward to hand her 
to the pill-box, which was at the service 
of all the pills in Hampton Court Pal- 
ace ; and she got into that vehicle with 
distinguished serenity and was driven 
away. 

Thenceforth the Dowager, with a 
light and careless humor, often recount- 
ed to her -particular acquaintance how, 
after a hard trial, she had found it im- 
possible to know those people who be- 
longed to Henry’s wife, and who had 
made that desperate set to catch him. 
Whether she had come to the conclu- 
sion beforehand, that to get rid of them 
would give her favorite pretence a bet- 
ter air, might save her some occasional 
inconvenience, and could risk no loss 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


3°5 


(the pretty creature being fast married, 
and her father devoted to her), was best 
known to herself. Though this history 
has its opinion on that point too, and 
decidedly in the affirmative. 


CHAPTER IX. 

APPEARANCE AND DISAPPEARANCE. 

“Arthur, my dear boy,” said Mr. 
Meagles, on the evening of the follow- 
ing day, “ mother and I have been 
talking this over, and we don’t feel 
comfortable in remaining as we are. 
That elegant connection of ours — that 
dear lady who was here yesterday — ” 

“ I understand,” said Arthur. 

“ Even that affable and condescend- 
ing ornament of society,” pursued Mr. 
Meagles, “may misrepresent us, we are 
afraid. We could bear a great deal, 
Arthur, for her sake ; but we think we 
would rather not bear that, if it was all 
the same to her.” 

“ Good,” said Arthur. “ Go on.” 

“You see,” proceeded Mr. Meagles, 

“ it might put us wrong with our son-in- 
law, it might even put us wrong with our 
daughter, and it might lead to a great 
deal of domestic trouble. You see, don’t 
you ? ” 

“ Yes, indeed,” returned Arthur, 

“ there is much reason in what you 
say.” He had glanced at Mrs. Mea- 
gles, who was always on the good and> 
sensible side ; and a petition had shone 
out of her honest face that he would 
support Mr. Meagles in his present in- 
clinings. 

“ So we are very much disposed, are 
mother and I,” said Mr. Meagles, “to 
pack up bag and baggage and go among 
the Allongers and Marshongers once 
more. I mean we are very much dis- 
posed to be off, strike right through 
France into Italy, and see our Pet.” 

“ And I don’t think,” replied Arthur,, 
touched by the motherly anticipation in 
the bright face of Mrs. Meagles (she 
must have been very like her daughter, 
once), “ that you could do better. And 
if you ask me for my advice, it is that 
you set off to-morrow.” 


“ Is it really, though ? ” said Mr. 
Meagles. “Mother, this is being 
^backed in an idea?” 

Mother, with a look which thanked 
Clennam in a manner very agreeable to 
him, answered that it was indeed. 

“The fact is, besides, Arthur,” said 
Mr. Meagles, the old cloud coming 
over his face, “that my son-in-law is 
already in debt again, and that I sup- 
ose I must clear him again. It may 
e as well, even on this account, that I 
should step over there, and look him 
up in a friendly way. Then again, 
here’s mother foolishly anxious (and 
yet naturally too) about Pet’s state of 
health, and that she should not be left 
to feel lonesome at the present time. 
It ’s undeniably a long way off, Arthur, 
and a strange place for the poor love 
under all the circumstances. Let her 
be as well cared for as any lady in that 
land, still it is a long way off. Just as 
Home is Home though it ’s never so 
Homely, why you see,” said Mr. Mea- 
gles, adding a new version to the prov- 
erb, “ Rome is Rome though it ’s never 
so Romely.” 

“ All perfectly true,” observed Arthur, 
“ and all sufficient reasons for going.” 

“ I am glad you think so ; it decides 
me. Mother, my dear, you may get 
ready. We have lost our pleasant in- 
terpreter (she spoke three foreign lan- 
guages beautifully, Arthur ; you have 
heard her many a time), and you must 
pull me through it, mother, as well as 
> you can. I require a deal of pulling 
through, Arthur,” said Mr Meagles, 
shaking his head, — “a deal of pulling 
through. I stick at everything beyond 
a noun-substantive, — and I stick at 
him, if he’s at all a tight one.” 

“ Now I think of it,” returned Clen- 
nam, “ there ’s Cavalletto. He shall 
go with you if you like. I could not 
afford to lose him, but you will bring 
him safe back.” 

“ Well ! I am much obliged to you, 
my boy,” said Mr. Meagles, turning it 
over, “but I think not. No, I think 
I ’ll be pulled through by mother. 
Caval-looro (I stick at his very name to 
start with, and it sounds like the chorus 
to a comic song), is so necessary to you, 
that I don’t like the thought of taking 


20 


306 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


him away. More than that, there ’s no 
saying when we may come home again ; 
and it would never do to take him away 
for an indefinite time. The cottage is 
not what it was. It only holds two lit- 
tle people less than it ever did, — Pet 
and her poor unfortunate maid Tatty- 
coram ; but it seems empty now. Once 
out of it, there ’s no knowing when we 
may come back to it. No, Arthur, I ’ll 
be pulled through by mother.” 

They would do best by themselves 
perhaps, after all, Clennam thought ; 
therefore did not press his proposal. 

“ If you would come down and stay 
here for a change, when it would n’t 
trouble you,” Mr. M eagles resumed, 
“I should be glad to think — and so 
would mother too, I know — that you 
were brightening up the old place with 
a bit of life it was used to when it was 
full, and that the Babies on the wall 
there had a kind eye upon them sorpe- 
times. You so belong to the spot, and 
to them, Arthur, and we should every 
one of us have been so happy if it had 
fallen out — but, let us see — how ’s the 
weather for travelling, now?” Mr. 
M eagles broke off, cleared his throat, 
and got up to look out of window. 

They agreed that the weather was of 
high promise ; and Clennam kept the 
talk in that safe direction until it had 
become easy again, when he gently 
diverted it to Henry Gowan, and his 
quick sense and agreeable qualities 
when he was delicately dealt with ; he 
likewise dwelt on the indisputable affec- 
tion he entertained for his wife. Clen- 
nam did not fail of his effect upon good 
Mr. Meagles, whom these commenda- 
tions greatly cheered ; and who took 
mother to witness that the single and 
cordial desire of his heart in reference 
to their daughter’s husband was har- 
moniously to exchange friendship for 
friendship, and confidence for confi- 
dence. Within a few hours the cottage 
furniture began to be wrapped up for 
preservation in the family absence, — or, 
as Mr. Meagles expressed it, the house 
began to put its hair in papers, — and 
within a few days father and mother 
were gone, Mrs. Tickit and Dr. Buchan 
were posted, as of yore, behind the 
parlor blind, and Arthur’s solitary feet 


were rustling among the dry fallen 
leaves in the garden walks. 

As he had a liking for the spot, he 
seldom let a week pass without paying 
it a visit. Sometimes he went down 
alone from Saturday to Monday; some- 
times his partner accompanied him ; 
sometimes, he merely strolled for an 
hour or two about the house and gar- 
den, saw that all was right, and returned 
to London again. At all times and 
under all circumstances Mrs. Tickit, 
with her dark row of curls, and Dr. 
Buchan, sat in the parlor window, look- 
ing out for the family return. 

On one of his visits Mrs. Tickit re- 
ceived him with the words, “ I have 
something to tell you, Mr. Clennam, 
that will surprise you.” So surprising 
was the something in question, that it 
actually brought Mrs. Tickit out of the 
parlor window, and produced her in the 
garden walk, when Clennam went in 
at the gate on its being opened for 
him. 

“What is it, Mrs. Tickit?” said 
he. 

“ Sir,” returned that faithful house- 
keeper, having taken him into the par- 
lor and closed the door ; “ if ever I saw 
the led-away and deluded child in my 
life, I saw her identically in the dusk of 
yesterday evening.” 

“ You don’t mean Tatty — ” 

“ Coram yes I do ! ” quoth Mrs. 
Tickit, clearing the disclosure at a 
leap. 

“Where?” 

“ Mr. Clennam,” returned Mrs. 
Tickit, “ I was a little heavy in my eyes, 
being that I was waiting longer than 
customary for my cup of tea which was 
then preparing by Mary Jane. I was 
not sleeping, nor what a person would 
term correctly dozing. I was more 
what a person would strictly call watch- 
ing with my eyes closed. ” 

Without entering upon an inquiry 
into this curious abnormal condition, 
Clennam said, “ Exactly. Well ? ” 

“ Well, sir,” proceeded Mrs. Tickit, 
“ I was thinking of one thing and think- 
ing of another. Just as you yourself 
might. Just as anybody might.” 

“ Precisely so,” said Clennam. 
“Well?” 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


3°7 


“ And when I do think of one thing 
and do think of another,” pursued Mrs. 
Tickit, “ I hardly need to tell you, Mr. 
Clennam, that I think of the family. 
Because, dear me ! a person’s thoughts,” 
Mrs. Tickit said this with an argumen- 
tative and philosophic air, “ however 
they may stray, will go more or less on 
what is uppermost in their minds. 
They will do it, sir, and a person can’t 
prevent them.” 

Arthur subscribed to this discovery 
with a nod. 

“You find it so yourself, sir, I ’ll be 
bold to say,” said Mrs. Tickit, “ and 
we all find it so. It ain’t our stations in 
life that changes us, Mr. Clennam ; 
thoughts is free ! — As I was saying, I 
was thinking of one thing and thinking 
of another, and thinking very much of 
the family. Not of the family in the 
present times only, but in the past 
times too. For when a person does 
begin thinking of one thing and think- 
ing of another, in that manner as it ’s 
getting dark, what I say is that all times 
seem to be present, and a person must 
get out of that state and consider, before 
they can say which is which.” 

He nodded again ; afraid to utter a 
word, lest it should present any new 
opening to Mrs. Tickit’s conversational 
powers. 

“ In consequence of which,” said 
Mrs. Tickit, “when I quivered my eyes 
and saw her actual form and figure look- 
ing in at the gate, I let them close again 
without so much as starting ; for that 
actual form and figure came so pat to 
the time when it belonged to the house 
as much as mine or your own, that I 
never thought at the moment of its hav- 
ing gone away. But, sir, when I quiv- 
ered my eyes again and saw that it was 
n’t there, then it all flooded upon me 
with a fright, and I jumped up.” 

“You ran out directly?” said Clen- 
nam. 

“ I ran out,” assented Mrs. Tickit, 
“ as fast as ever my feet would carry 
me ; and if you ’ll credit it, Mr. Clen- 
nam, there was n’t in the whole shining 
Heavens, no not so much as a finger of 
that young woman.” 

Passing over the absence from the 
firmament of this novel constellation, 


Arthur inquired of Mrs. Tickit if she 
herself went beyond the gate? 

“ Went to and fro, and high and low,” 
said Mrs. Tickit, “and saw no sign of 
her?” 

He then asked Mrs. Tickit how long 
a space of time she supposed there 
might have been between the two sets 
of ocular quiverings she had experi- 
enced. Mrs. Tickit, though minutely 
circumstantial in her reply, had no set- 
tled opinion between five seconds and 
ten minutes. She was so plainly at sea 
on this part of the case, and had so 
clearly been startled out of slumber, that 
Clennam was much disposed to regard 
the appearance as a dream. Without 
hurting Mrs. Tickit’s feelings with that 
infidel solution of her mystery, he took 
it away from the cottage with him ; and 
probably would have retained it ever af- 
terwards, if a circumstance had not soon 
happened to change his opinion. 

He was passing at nightfall along the 
Strand, and the lamplighter was going 
on before him, under whose hand the 
street lamps, blurred by the foggy air, 
burst out one after another, like so 
many blazing sunflowers coming into 
full blow all at once, — when a stoppage 
on the pavement, caused by a train 
of coal-wagons toiling up from the 
wharves at the river-side, brought him 
to a stand-still. He had been walking 
quickly, and going with some current 
of thought ; and the sudden check given 
to both operations caused him to look 
freshly about him, as people under such 
circumstances usually do. 

Immediately, he saw in advance — 
a few people intervening, but still so 
near to him that he could have touched 
them by stretching out his arm — Tat- 
tycoram and a strange man of a remark- 
able appearance, — a swaggering man, 
with a high nose, and a black mustache 
as false in its color as his' eyes were 
false in their expression, who wore his 
heavy cloak with the air of a foreigner. 
His dress and general appearance were 
those of a man on travel, and he seemed 
to have very recently joined the girl. 
In bending down (being much taller 
than she was), listening to whatever she 
said to him, he looked over his shoul- 
der with the suspicious glance of one 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


308 

who was not unused to be mistrustful 
that his footsteps might be dogged. It 
was then that Clennam saw his face : 
as his eyes lowered on the people be- 
hind him in the aggregate, without par- 
ticularly resting upon Clennam’s lace 
or any other. 

He had scarcely turned his head 
about again, and it was still bent down, 
listening to the girl, when the stoppage 
ceased, and the obstructed stream of 
people flowed on. Still bending his 
head and listening to the girl, he went 
on at her side, and Clennam followed 
them, resolved to play this unexpected 
play out, and see where they went. 

He had hardly made the determina- 
tion (though he was not long about it), 
when he was again as suddenly brought 
up as he had been by the stoppage. 
They turned short' into the Adelphi, — 
the girl evidently leading, — and went 
straight on, as if they were going to the 
Terrace which overhangs the river. 

There is always, to this day, a sudden 
pause in that place to the roar of the 
great thoroughfare. The many sounds 
become so deadened that the change is 
like putting cotton in the ears, or hav- 
ing the head thickly muffled. At that 
time the contrast was far greater ; there 
being no small steamboats on the river, 
no landing-places but slippery wooden 
stairs and foot-causeways, no railroad 
on the opposite bank, no hanging-bridge 
or fish-market near at hand, no traffic 
on the nearest bridge of stone, nothing 
moving on the stream but watermen’s 
wherries and coal-lighters. Long and 
broad black tiers of the latter, moored 
fast in the mud as if they were never to 
move again, made the shore funereal 
and silent after dark ; and kept what 
little water-movement there was far out 
towards mid-stream. At any hour later 
than sunset, and not least at that hour 
when most of the people who have any- 
thing to eat at home are going home to 
eat it, and when most of those who have 
nothing have hardly yet slunk out to 
beg or steal, it was a deserted place and 
looked on a deserted scene. 

Such was the hour when Clennam 
stopped at the corner, observing the 
girl and the strange man as they went 
down the street. The man’s footsteps 


were so noisy on the echoing stones 
that he was unwilling to add the sound 
of his own. But when they had passed 
the turning and were in the darkness of 
the dark corner leading to the terrace, 
he made after them with such indiffer- 
ent appearance of being a casual pas- 
senger on his way as he could assume. 

When he rounded the dark corner, 
they were walking along the terrace 
towards a figure which was coming 
towards them. If he had seen it by 
itself, under such conditions of gas- 
lamp, mist, and distance, he might not 
have known it at first sight; but with 
the figure of the girl to prompt him, he 
at once recognized Miss Wade. 

He stopped at the corner, seeming to 
look back expectantly up the street, as 
if he had made an appointment with 
some one to meet him there ; but he 
kept a careful eye on the three. When 
they came together, the man took off 
his hat, and made Miss Wade a bow. 
The girl appeared to say a few words 
as though she presented him, or ac- 
counted for his being late, or early, or 
what not; and then fell a pace or so 
behind, by herself. Miss Wade and 
the man then began to walk up and 
down ; the man having the appearance 
of being extremely courteous and com- 
plimentary in manner; Miss Wade 
having the appearance of being ex- 
tremely haughty. 

When they came dovrn to the corner 
and turned, she was saying. “If I 
pinch myself for it, sir, that is my busi- 
ness. Confine yourself to yours, and 
ask me no question.” 

“By Heaven, ma’am !” he replied, 
making her another bow. “It was my 
profound respect for the strength of 
your character, and my admiration of 
your beauty.” 

“I want neither the one nor the 
other from any one,” said she, “and 
certainly not from you of all creatures. 
Go on with your report.” 

“ Am I pardoned ? ” he asked, with 
an air of half-abashed gallantry. 

“ You are paid,” she said, “and that 
is all you want.” 

Whether the girl hung behind be- 
cause she was not to hear the business, 
or as already knowing enough about it, 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


309 


Clennam could not determine. They 
turned and she turned. She looked 
away at the River, as she walked with 
her hands folded before her ; and that 
was all he could make of her without 
showing his face. There happened, by 
good-fortune, to be a lounger really 
waiting for some one ; and he some- 
times looked over the railing at the wa- 
ter, and sometimes came to the dark 
corner and looked up the street, render- 
ing Arthur less conspicuous. 

When Miss Wade and the man came 
back again, she was saying, “You must 
wait until to-morrow.” 

“ A thousand pardons ! ” he returned. 
“ My faith ! Then it ’s not convenient 
to-night ? ” 

“No. I tell you I must get it before 
I can give it to you.” 

She stopped in the roadway, as if to 
put an end to the conference. He of 
course stopped too. And the girl 
stopped. 

“ It ’s a little inconvenient,” said the 
man. “ A little. But, Holy blue ! 
that ’s nothing, in such a service. I 
am without money to-night by chance. 
I have a good banker in this city, but 
I would not wish to draw upon the 
house until the time when I shall draw 
for a round sum.” 

“Harriet,” said Miss Wade, “ ar- 
range with him — this gentleman here, 
— for sending him some money to-mor- 
row.” She said it with a slur of the 
word “ gentleman” which was more 
contemptuous than any emphasis, and 
walked slowly on. 

The man bent his head again, and 
the girl spoke to him as they both fol- 
lowed her. Clennam ventured to look 
at the girl as they moved away. He 
could note that her rich black eyes were 
fastened upon the man with a scrutiniz- 
ing expression, and that she kept at a 
little distance from him, as they walked 
side by side tq the further end of the 
terrace. 

A loud and altered clank upon the 
pavement warned him, before he could 
discern what was passing there, that the 
man was coming back alone. Clennam 
lounged into the road, towards the rail- 
ing ; and the man passed at a quick 
swing, with the end of his cloak thrown 


over his shoulder, singing a scrap of a 
French song. 

The whole vista had no one in it now 
but himself. The lounger had lounged 
out of view, and Miss Wade and Tatty- 
coram were gone. More than ever bent 
on seeing what became of them, and 
on having some information to give his 
good friend Mr. M eagles, he went out 
at the further end of the terrace, look- 
ing cautiously about him. He rightly 
judged that, at first at all events, they 
would go in a contrary direction from 
their late companion. He soon saw 
them in a neighboring by-street, which 
was not a thoroughfare, evidently allow- 
ing time for the man to get well out of 
their way. They walked leisurely arm 
in arm down one side of the street, and 
returned on the opposite side. When 
they came back to the street-corner, 
they changed their pace for the pace of 
people with an object and a distance 
before them, and walked steadily away. 
Clennam, no less steadily, kept them in 
sight. 

They crossed the Strand, and passed 
through Covent Garden (under the win- 
dows of his old lodging where dear 
Little Dorrit had come that night), and 
slanted away northeast, until they 
passed the great building whence Tat- 
tycoram derived her name, and turned 
into the Gray’s Inn Road. Clennam 
was quite at home here, in right of Flo- 
ra, not to mention the Patriarch and 
Pancks, and kept them in view with 
ease. He was beginning to wonder 
where they might be going next, when 
that wonder was lost in the greater 
wonder with which he saw them turn 
into the Patriarchal street. That won- 
der was in its turn swallowed up in the 
greater wonder with which he saw them 
stop at the Patriarchal door. A low 
double-knock at the bright brass knock- 
er, a gleam of light into the road from 
the opened door, a brief pause for in- 
quiry and answer, and the door was 
shut, and they were housed. 

After looking at the surrounding ob- 
jects for assurance that he was not in an 
odd dream, and after pacing a little 
while before the house, Arthur knocked 
at the door. It was opened by the usu- 
al maid-servant, and she showed him 


3 io 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


up at once, with her usual alacrity, to 
Flora’s sitting-room. 

There was no one with Flora but Mr. 
F.’s Aunt, which respectable gentlewo- 
man, basking in a balmy atmosphere of 
tea and toast, was ensconced in an easy- 
chair by the fireside, with a little table 
at her elbow, and a clean white hand- 
kerchief spread over her lap on which 
two pieces of toast at that moment 
awaited consumption. Bending over 
a steaming vessel of tea, and looking 
through the steam, and breathing 
forth the steam, like a malignant Chi- 
nese enchantress engaged in the per- 
formance of unholy rites, Mr. F.’s Aunt 
put down her great teacup and ex- 
claimed, “Drat him, if he ain’t come 
back again ! ” 

It would seem from the foregoing ex- 
clamation that this uncompromising 
relative of the lamented Mr. F., meas- 
uring time by the acuteness of her sen- 
sations and not by the clock, supposed 
Clennam to have lately gone away ; 
whereas at least a quarter of a year had 
elapsed since he had had the temerity 
to present himself before her. 

“ My goodness Arthur ! ” cried Flo- 
ra, rising to give him a cordial recep- 
tion, “ Doyce and Clennam what a start 
and a surprise for though not far from 
the machinery and foundry business 
and surely might be taken sometimes if 
at no other time about midday when a 
glass of sherry and a humble sandwich 
of whatever cold meat in the larder 
might not come amiss nor taste the 
worse for being friendly for you know 
you buy it somewhere and wherever 
bought a profit must be made or they 
would never keep the place it stands to 
reason without a motive still never seen 
and learnt now not to be expected, for 
as Mr. F. himself said if seeing is be- 
lieving not seeing is believitfg too and 
when you don’t see you may fully be- 
lieve you’re not remembered not that 
I expect you Arthur Doyce and Clen- 
nam to remember me why should I for 
the days are gone but bring another 
teacwp here directly and tell her fresh 
toast and pray sit near the fire.” 

Arthur was in the greatest anxiety to 
explain the object of his visit ; but was 
put off for the moment, in spite of him- 


self, by what he understood, of the re- 
proachful purport of these words, and 
by the genuine pleasure she testified in 
seeing him. -P 

“And now pray tell me something all 
you know,” said Flora, drawing her 
chair near to his, * ‘ about the good dear 
quiet little thing and all the changes of 
her fortunes carriage people now no 
doubt and horses without number most 
romantic, a coat of arms of course and 
wild beasts on their hind legs showing 
it as if it was a copy they had done with 
mouths from ear to ear good gracious, 
and has she her health which is the first 
consideration after all for what is wealth 
without it Mr. F. himself so often say- 
ing when his twinges came that sixpence 
a day and find yourself and no gout so 
much preferable, not that he could have 
lived on anything like it being the last 
man or that the precious little thing 
though far too familiar an expression 
now had any tendency of that sort much 
too slight and small but looked so fra- 
gile bless her ! ” 

Mr. F.’s Aunt, who had eaten a piece 
of toast down to the crust, here solemnly 
handed the crust to Flora, who ate it 
for her as a matter of business. Mr. 
F.’s Aunt then moistened her ten fin- 
gers in slow succession at her lips, and 
wiped them in exactly the same order 
on the white handkerchief ; then took 
the other piece of toast, and fell to work 
upon it. While pursuing this routine, 
she looked at Clennam with an expres- 
sion of such intense severity that he felt 
obliged to look at her in return, against 
his personal inclinations. 

“ She is in Italy, with all her family, 
Flora,” he said, when the dread lady 
was occupied again. 

“ In Italy is she really?” said Flora, 
“with the grapes and figs growing 
everywhere and lava necklaces and 
bracelets too that land of poetry with 
burning mountains picturesque beyond 
belief "though if the organ-boys come 
away from the neighborhood not to be 
scorched nobody can wonder being so 
young and bringing their white mice 
with them most humane, and is she 
really in that favored land with nothing 
but blue about her and dying gladiators 
and Belvederas though Mr. F. himself 


LITTLE JjORRIT. 


did not believe for his objection when 
in spirits was that the images could not 
be true there being no medium between 
expensive quantities of linen badly got 
up and all in creases and none what- 
ever, which certainly does not seem 
probable though perhaps in conse- 
quence of the extremes of rich and poor 
which may account for it.” 

Arthur tried to edge a word in, but 
Flora hurried on again. 

“Venice Preserved too,” said she, 
“ I think you have been there is it well 
or ill preserved for people differ so and 
Maccaroni if they really eat it like the 
conjurers why not cut it shorter, you 
are acquainted Arthur — dear Doyce 
and Clennam at least not dear and most 
assuredly not Doyce for I have not the 
pleasure but pray excuse me — acquaint- 
ed I believe with Mantua what has it 
got to do with Mantua making for I 
never have been able to conceive ? ” 

“ I believe there is no connection, 
Flora, between the two,” Arthur was 
beginning, when she caught him up 
again. 

“Upon your word no isn’t there I 
never did but that’s like me I run away 
with an idea and having none to spare 
I keep it, alas there was a time dear 
Arthur that is to say decidedly not dear 
nor Arthur neither but you understand 
me when one bright idea gilded the 
what’s-his-name horizon of et cetera 
but it is darkly clouded now and all is 
over.” 

Arthur’s increasing wish to speak of 
something very different was by this 
time so plainly written on his face, that 
Flora stopped in a tender look, and 
asked him what it was? 

“ I have the greatest desire, Flora, to 
speak to some one who is now in this 
house, — with Mr. Casby no doubt. 
Some one whom I saw come in, and 
whQ, in a misguided and deplorable 
way, has deserted the house of a friend 
of mine.” 

“ Papa sees so many and such odd 
people,” said Flora, rising, “that I 
shouldn’t venture to go down for any 
one but you Arthur but for you I would 
willingly go down in a diving-bell much 
more a dining-room and will come back 
directly if you ’ll mind and at the same 


3« 

time not mind Mr. F.’s Aunt while I ’m 
gone.” 

With those words and a parting 
glance, Flora bustled out, leaving Clen- 
nam under dreadful apprehensions of 
his terrible charge. 

The first variation which manifested 
itself in Mr. F.’s Aunt’s demeanor when 
she had finished her piece of toast, was 
a loud and prolonged sniff. Finding it 
impossible to avoid construing this dem- 
onstration into a defiance of himself, its 
gloomy significance being unmistakable, 
Clennam looked plaintively at the excel- 
lent though prejudiced lady from whom 
it emanated, in the hope that she might 
be disarmed by a meek submission. 

“ None of your eyes at me,” said 
Mr. F.’s Aunt, shivering with hostility. 
“Take that.” 

“ That ” was the crust of the piece of 
toast. Clennam accepted the boon with 
a look of gratitude, and held it in his 
hand under the pressure of a little em- 
barrassment, which was not relieved 
when Mr. F.’s Aunt, elevating her voice 
into a cry of considerable power, ex- 
claimed, “He has a proud stomach, this 
chap ! He ’s too proud a chap to eat 
it ! ” and, coming out of her chair, 
shook her venerable fist so very close 
to his nose as to tickle the surface. But 
for the timely return of Flora, to find 
him in this difficult situation, further 
consequences might have ensued. Flo- 
ra, without the least discomposure or 
surprise, but congratulating the old lady 
in an approving manner on being “very 
lively to-night,” handed her back to her 
chair. 

“ He has a proud stomach, this chap,” 
said Mr. F.’s relation, on being reseated. 
“ Give him a meal of chaff! ” 

“ O, I don’t think he would like 
that, aunt,” returned Flora. 

“ Give him a meal of chaff, I tell 
you,” said Mr. F.’s Aunt, glaring round 
iHora on her enemy. “It’s the only 
thing for a proud stomach. Let him 
eat it up every morsel. Drat him, give 
him a meal of chaff ! ” 

Under a general pretence of helping 
him to this refreshment, Flora got him 
out on the staircase ; Mr*. F. ’s Aunt even 
then constantly reiterating, with inex- 
pressible bitterness, that he was “ a 


312 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


chap,” and had “a proud stomach,” 
and over and over again insisting on 
that equine provision being made for 
him which she had already so strongly 
prescribed. 

“ Such an inconvenient staircase and 
so many corner stairs Arthur,” whis- 
pered Flora, “would you object to put- 
ting your arm round me under my pel- 
erine ? ” 

With a sense of going down stairs in 
a highly ridiculous manner, Clennam 
descended in the required attitude, and 
only released his fair burden at the din- 
ing-room door ; indeed, even there she 
was rather difficult to get rid of, remain- 
ing in his embrace to murmur, “ Arthur, 
for mercy’s sake don’t breathe it to 
papa ! ” 

She accompanied Arthur into the 
room, where the Patriarch sat alone, 
with his list shoes on the fender, twirl- 
ing his thumbs as if he had never left 
on. The youthful Patriarch, aged ten, 
looked out of his picture-frame above 
him, with no calmer air than he. Both 
smooth heads were alike beaming, blun- 
ering, and bumpy. 

“ Mr. Clennam, I am glad to see you. 

I hope you are well, sir, I hope you are 
well. Please to sit down, please to sit 
down.” 

“I had hoped, sir,” said Clennam, 
doing so, and looking round with a face 
of blank disappointment, “ not to find 
you alone.” 

“ Ah, indeed ? ” said the Patriarch, 
sweetly. “Ah, indeed?” 

“ I told you so, you know, papa,” cried 
Flora. 

“Ah, to be sure ! ” returned the Pa- 
triarch. “Yes, just so. Ah, to be 
sure ! ” 

“Pray, sir,” demanded Clennam, 
anxiously, “is Miss Wade gone?” 

“ Miss ? O, you call her Wade,” 

returned Mr. Casby. “ Highly proper.” 

Arthur quickly returned, “ What do 
you call her ? ” 

“Wade,” said Mr. Casby. “ O, 
always Wade.” 

After looking at the philanthropic 
visage, and the long silky white hair for 
a few seconds, during which Mr. Casby 
twirled his thumbs, and smiled at the 
fire as if he were benevolently wishing I 


it to burn him that he might forgive it, 
Arthur began, — 

“ I beg your pardon, Mr. Casby — ” 

“Not so, not so,” said the Patriarch, 
“not so.” 

“ — But, Miss Wade had an attend- 
ant with her — a young woman brought 
up by friends of mine, over whom her 
influence is not considered very salutary, 
and to whom I should be glad to have 
the opportunity of giving the assurance 
that she has not yet forfeited the in- 
terest of those protectors.” 

“Really, really?” returned the Pa- 
triarch. 

“ Will you therefore be so good as to 
give me the address of Miss Wade?” 

“ Dear, dear, dear ! ” said the Patri- 
arch, “ how very unfortunate ! If you 
had only sent in to me when they were 
here ! I observed the young woman, 
Mr. Clennam. A fine full-colored 
young woman, Mr. Clennam, with very 
dark hair and very dark eyes. If I mis- 
take not, if I mistake not ?” 

Arthur assented, and said once more 
with new expression, “ If you will«be 
so good as to give me the address.” 

“ Dear, dear, dear ! ” exclaimed the 
Patriarch, in sweet regret. “Tut, tut, 
tut ! what a pity, what a pity ! I have 
no address, sir. Miss Wade mostly 
lives abroad, Mr. Clennam. She has 
done so for some years, and she is (if I 
may say so of a fellow-creature and a 
lady) fitful and uncertain to a fault, Mr. 
Clennam. I may not see her again for 
a long, long time, I may never see her 
again. What a pity, what a pity ! ” 

Clennam saw, now, that he had as 
much hope of getting assistance out of 
the Portrait as out of the Patriach ; but 
he said, nevertheless, — 

“ Mr. Casby, could you, for the satis- 
faction of the friends I have mentioned, 
and under any obligation of secrecy that 
you may consider it your duty to impose, 
give me any information at all touching 
Miss Wade? I have seen her abroad, 
and I have seen her at home, but I 
know nothing of her. Could you give 
me any account of her whatever? ” 

“ None,” returned the Patriarch, 
shaking his big head with his utmost 
benevolence, — “ none at all. Dear, 
dear, dear ! What a real pity that she 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


3i3 


stayed so short a time, and you delayed ! 
As confidential agency business, agency 
business, I have occasionally paid this 
lady money ; but what satisfaction is it 
to you, sir, to know that? ” 

“ Truly none at all,” said Clennam. 

“ Truly,” assented the Patriarch, 
with a shining face as he philanthropi- 
cally smiled at the fire, “none at all, 
sir. You hit the wise answer, Mr. 
Clennam. Truly none at all, sir.” 

His turning of his smooth thumbs 
over one another as he sat there was 
so typical to Clennam of the way in 
which he would make the subject re- 
volve if it were pursued, never showing 
any new part of it nor allowing it to 
make the smallest advance, that it did 
much to help to convince him of his 
labor having been in vain. He might 
have taken any time to think about it, 
for Mr. Casby, well accustomed to get 
on anywhere by leaving everything to 
his bumps and his white hair, knew 
his strength to lie in silence. So there 
Casby sat, twirling and twirling, and 
making his polished head and forehead 
look largely benevolent in every knob. 

With this spectacle before him, Ar- 
thur had risen to go, when from the in- 
ner dock where the good ship Pancks 
was hove down when out in no cruising 
ground, the noise was heard of that 
steamer laboring towards them. It 
struck Arthur that the noise began de- 
monstratively far off, as though Mr. 
Pancks sought to impress on any one 
who might happen to think about it, that 
he was working on from out of hearing. 

Mr. Pancks and he shook hands, and 
the former brought his employer a 
letter or two to sign. Mr. Pancks 
in shaking hands merely scratched his 
eyebrow with his left forefinger and 
snorted once, but Clennam, who under- 
stood him better now than of old, com- 
prehended that he had almost done for 
the evening and wished to say a word 
to him outside. Therefore, when he 
had taken his leave of Mr. Casby, and 
(which was a more difficult process) of 
Flora, he sauntered in the neighbor- 
hood on Mr. Pancks’s line of road. 

He had waited but a short time when 
Mr. Pancks appeared. Mr. Pancks 
shakes hands again with another expres- 


sive snort, and taking off his hat to put 
his hair up, Arthur thought he received 
his cue to speak to him as one who 
knew pretty well what had just now 
passed. Therefore he said, without 
any preface, — 

“ I suppose they were really gone, 
Pancks? ” 

“Yes,” replied Pancks. “ They were 
really gone.” 

“ Does he know where to find that 
lady ? ” 

“ Can’t say. I should think so.” 

Mr. Pancks did not ? No, Mr. 
Pancks did not. Did Mr. Pancks know 
anything about her? 

“ I expect,” rejoined that worthy, “ I 
know as much about her as she knows 
about herself. She is somebody’s child 

— anybody’s — nobody’s. Put her in a 
room in London here with any six peo- 
ple old enough to be her parents, and 
her parents may be there for anything 
she knows. They may be in any 
house she sees, they may be in any 
churchyard she passes, she may run 
against ’em in any street, she may make 
chance acquaintances of ’em at any time ; 
and never know it. She knows nothing 
about ’em. She knows nothing about 
any relative whatever. Never did. 
Never will.” 

“ Mr. Casby could enlighten her, per- 
haps ? ” 

“ May be,” said Pancks. “ I expect 
so, but don’t know. He has long had 
money (not overmuch as I make out) 
in trust to dole out to her when she 
can’t do without it. Sometimes she ’s 
proud and won’t touch it for a length of 
time ; sometimes she ’s so poor that 
she must have it. She writhes under 
her life. A woman more angry, pas- 
sionate, reckless, and revengeful never 
lived. She came for money to-night. 
Said she had peculiar occasion for it.” 

“I think,” observed Clennam, mus- 
ing, “ I by chance know what occasion 

— I mean into whose pocket the money 
is to go.” 

“ Indeed ? ” said Pancks. “ If it ’s 
a compact, I ’d recommend that party to 
be exact in it. I wouldn’t trust myself 
to that woman, young and handsome 
as she is, if I had wronged her ; no, 
not for twice my proprietor’s money ! 


314 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


Unless,” Pancks added as a saving 
clause, “ I had a lingering illness on me 
and wanted to get it over.” 

Arthur, hurriedly reviewing his own 
obseivation of her, found it to tally 
pretty nearly with Mr. Pancks’ s view. 

“ The wonder is to me,” pursued 
Pancks, “that she has never done for 
my proprietor, as the only person con- 
nected with her story she can lay hold 
of. Mentioning that, I may tell you, 
between ourselves, that I am some- 
times tempted to do for him myself.” 

Arthur started and said, “Dear me, 
Pancks, don’t say that ! ” 

“ Understand me,” said Pancks, ex- 
tending five cropped coaly finger-nails 
on Arthur’s arm ; “I don’t mean, cut 
his throat. But by all that’s precious, 
if he goes too far, I ’ll. cut his hair ? ” 
Having exhibited himself in the new 
light of enunciating this tremendous 
threat, Mr. Pancks, with a countenance 
of grave import, snorted several times 
and steamed away. 


CHAPTER X. 

THE DREAMS OF MRS. FLINTWINCH 
THICKEN. 

The shady waiting-rooms of the Cir- 
cumlocution Office, where he passed a 
good deal of time in company with 
various troublesome Convicts who were 
under sentence to be broken alive on 
that wheel, had afforded Arthur Clen- 
nam ample leisure, in three or four suc- 
cessive days, to exhaust the subject of 
his late glimpse of Miss Wade and 
Tattycoram. He had been able to 
make no more of it and no less of it, 
and in this unsatisfactory condition he 
was fain to leave it. 

During this space he had not been to 
his mother’s dismal old house. One of 
his customary evenings for repairing 
thither now coming round, he left his 
dwelling and his partner at nearly nine 
o’clock, and slowly walked in the direc- 
tion of that grim home of his youth. 

It always affected his imagination as 
wrathful, mysterious, and sad; and his 
imagination was sufficiently impressible 


to see the whole neighborhood under 
some dark tinge of its dark shadow. 
As he went along, upon a dreary night, 
the dim streets by which he went 
seemed all depositories of oppressive 
secrets. The deserted counting-houses, 
with their secrets of books and papers 
locked up in chests and safes ; the 
banking-houses, with their secrets of 
strong rooms and wells, the keys of 
which were in a very few secret pockets 
and a very few secret breasts ; the 
secrets of all the dispersed grinders in 
the vast mill, among whom there were 
doubtless plunderers, forgers, and trust- 
betrayers of many sorts, whom the light 
of any day that dawned might reveal ; 
lie could have fancied that these things, 
in hiding, imparted a heaviness to the 
air. The shadow thickening and thick- 
ening as he approached its source, he 
thought of the secrets of the lonely 
church-vaults, where the people who 
had hoarded and secreted in iron coffers 
were in their turn similarly hoarded, 
not yet at rest from doing harm ; and 
then of the secrets of the river, as it 
rolled its turbid tide between two frown- 
ing wildernesses of secrets, extending, 
thick and dense, for many miles, and 
warding off the free air and the free 
country sweptby winds and wingsofbirds. 

The shadow still darkening as he 
drew near the house, the melancholy 
room which his father had once occu- 
pied, haunted by the appealing face he 
had himself seen fade away with him 
when there was no other watcher by 
the bed, arose before his mind,. Its 
close air was secret. The gloom, and 
must, and dust of the whole tenement 
were secret. At the heart of it his 
mother presided, inflexible of face, in- 
domitable of will, firmly holding all the 
secrets of her own and his father’s life, 
and austerely opposing herself, front to 
front, to the great final secret of all life. 

He had turned into the narrow and 
steep street from which the court or 
enclosure wherein the house stood 
opened, when another footstep turned 
into it behind him, and so close upon 
his own that he w>as jostledfcto the wall. 
As his mind w'as teeming with these 
thoughts, the encounter took him alto- 
gether unprepared, so that the other 


LITTLE DORRIT L 


3i5 


passenger had had time to say boister- 
ously, “ Pardon ! Not my fault ! ” and 
to pass on before the instant had elapsed 
which was requisite to his recovery of 
the realities about him. 

When that moment had flashed away, 
he saw that the man striding on before 
him was the man who had been so 
much in his mind during the last few 
days. It was no casual resemblance, 
helped out by the force of the impres- 
sion the man made upon him. It was 
the man ; the man he had followed in 
company with the girl, and whom he 
had overheard talking to Miss Wade. 

The street was a sharp descent and 
was crooked too, and the man (who, 
although not drunk, had the air of being 
flushed with some strong drink) went 
down it so fast that Clennam lost him 
as he looked at him. With no defined 
intention of following him, but with an 
impulse to keep the figure in view a 
little longer, Clennam quickened his 
pace to pass the twist in the street 
which hid him from his sight. On 
turning it, he saw the man no more. 

Standing now, close to the gateway 
of his mother’s house, he looked down 
the street; but it was empty. There 
was no projecting shadow large enough 
to obscure the man ; there was no turn- 
ing near that he could have taken ; nor 
had there been any audible sound of 
the opening and closing of a door. 
Nevertheless, he concluded that the 
man must have had a key in his hand, 
and must have opened one of the many 
house doors and gone in. 

Ruminating on this strange chance 
and strange glimpse, he turned into the 
courtyard. As he looked, by mere hab- 
it, towards the feebly lighted windows of 
his mother’s room, his eyes encountered 
the figure he had just lost, standing 
against the iron railings of the little 
waste enclosure looking up at those 
windows, and laughing to himself. 
Some of the many vagrant cats who 
were always prowling about there by 
night, and who had taken fright at him, 
appeared to have stopped when he had 
stopped, and were looking at him, with 
eyes by no means unlike his own, from 
tops of walls and porches, and other safe 
points of pause. He had only halted 


for a moment to entertain himself thus ; 
he immediately went forward, throwing 
the end of his cloak off his shoulder as 
he went, ascended the unevenly sunken 
steps, and knocked a sounding knock at 
the door. 

Clennam’s surprise was not so absorb- 
ing but that he took his resolution with- 
out any incertitude. He went up to the 
door too, and ascended the steps too. 
His friend looked at him with a braggart 
air, and sang to himself : — 

“ Who passes by this road so late ? 

Compagnon de la Majolaine ; 

Who passes by this road so late ? 

Always gay ! ” 

After which he knocked again. 

“You are impatient, sir,” said Ar- 
thur. 

“ I am, sir. Death of my life, sir,” 
returned the stranger, “it ’s my charac- 
ter to be impatient ! ” 

The sound of Mistress Affery cau- 
tiously chaining the door before she 
opened it caused them both to look 
that way. Affery opened it, a very 
little, with a flaring candle in her 
hands, and asked who was that, at that 
time of night, with that knock. “ Why, 
Arthur ! ” she added with astonishment, 
seeing him first. “ Not you sure ? Ah, 
Lord save us ! No,” she cried out see- 
ing the other. “ Him again ! ” 

“It’s true ! Him again, dear Mrs. 
Flintwinch,” cried the stranger. “ Open 
the door, and let me take my dear friend 
Jeremiah to my arms ! Open the door, 
and let me hasten myself to embrace my 
Flintwinch ! ” 

“ He ’s not at home,” said Affery. 

“Fetch him!” cried the stranger. 
“ Fetch my Flintwinch ! Tell him that 
it is his old Blandois, who comes from 
arriving in England; tell him that it is 
his little boy who is here, his cabbage, 
his well-beloved ! Open the door, beau- 
tiful Mrs. Flintwinch, and in the mean 
time let me pass up stairs to present my 
compliments — homage of Blandois — to 
my lady ! My lady lives always ? It is 
well. Open then ! ” 

To Arthur’s increased surprise, Mis- 
tress Affery, stretching her eyes wide at 
himself, as if in warning that this was 
not a gentleman for him to interfere 


316 


LITTLE DORR IT. 


with, drew back the chain, and opened 
the door. The stranger, without any 
ceremony, walked into the hall, leaving 
Arthur to follow him. 

“ Despatch then ! Achieve then !• 
Bring my Flintwinch ! Announce me 
to my lady ! ” cried the stranger, clank- 
ing about the stone floor. 

“ Pray tell me, Affery,” said Arthur, 
aloud and sternly, as he surveyed him 
from head to foot with indignation ; 
“who is this gentleman?” 

“ Pray tell me, Affery,” the stranger 
repeated in his turn, “ who — ha, ha, ha ! 
— who is this gentleman ? ” 

The voice of Mrs. Clennam oppor- 
tunely called from her chamber above, 
“Affery, let them both come up. Ar- 
thur, come straight to me ! ” 

“Arthur?” exclaimed Blandois, tak- 
ing off his hat at arm’s length, and 
bringing his heels together from a 
great stride in making him a flourish- 
ing bow. “The son of my lady? I 
am the all-devoted of the son of my 
lady ! ” 

Arthur looked at him again in no 
more flattering manner thgn before, 
and, turning on his heel without ac- 
knowledgment, went up stairs. The 
visitor followed him up stairs. Mis- 
tress Affery took the key from behind 
the door, and deftly slipped out to 
fetch her lord. 

A by-stander, informed of the previous 
appearance of Monsieur Blandois in 
that room, would have observed a dif- 
ference in Mrs. Clennam’s present re- 
ception of him. Her face was not one 
to betray it ; and her suppressed man- 
ner, and her set voice were equally un- 
der her control. It wholly consisted 
in her never taking her eyes off his 
face from the moment of his entrance, 
and in her twice or thrice, when he 
was becoming noisy, swaying herself a 
very little forward in the chair in which 
she sat upright, with her hands im- 
movable upon its elbows ; as if she 
gave him the assurance that he should 
be presently heard at any length he. 
would. Arthur did not fail to observe 
this ; though the difference between 
the present occasion and the former 
was not within his power of observa- 
tion. 


“Madam,” said Blandois, “do me 
the honor to present me to Monsieur, 
your son. It appears to me, madam, 
that Monsieur, your son, is disposed to 
complain of me. He is not polite.” 

“ Sir,” said Arthur, striking in expe- 
ditiously, “ whoever you are, and how- 
ever you come to be here, if I were the 
master of this house I would lose no 
time in placing you on the outside of 
it.” 

“ But you are not,” said his mother, 
without looking at him. “ Unfortu- 
nately for the gratification of your un- 
reasonable temper, you are not the mas- 
ter, Arthur.” 

“ I make no claim to be, mother. If 
I object to this person’s manner of con- 
ducting himself here, and object to it 
so much, that if I had any authority 
here I certainly would not suffer him to 
remain a minute, I object on your ac- 
count.” 

“ In the case of objection being ne- 
cessary,” she returned, “I could ob- 
ject for myself. And of course I 
should.” 

The subject of their dispute, who had 
seated himself, laughed loud, and 
rapped his legs with his hand. 

“You have no right,” said Mrs. 
Clennam, always intent on Blandois, 
however directly she addressed her son, 
“ to speak to the prejudice of any gen- 
tleman (least of all a gentleman from 
another country), because he does not 
conform to your standard, or square 
his behavior by your rules. It is possi- 
ble that the gentleman may, on similar 
grounds, object to you.” 

“ I hope so,” returned Arthur. 

“ The gentleman,” pursued Mrs. 
Clennam, “on a former occasion 
brought a letter of recommendation to 
us from highly esteemed and responsible 
correspondents. I am perfectly unac- 
quainted with the gentleman’s object in 
coming here at present. I am entirely 
ignorant of it, and cannot be supposed 
likely to be able to form the remotest 
guess at its nature ” ; her habitual frown 
became stronger, as she very slowly and 
weightily emphasized those words ; 
“but, when the gentleman proceeds to 
explain his object, as I shall beg him 
to have the goodness to do to myself 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


317 


and Flintwinch, when Flintwinch re- 
turns, it will prove, no doubt, to be 
one more or less in the usual way of 
our business, which it will be both our 
business and our pleasure to advance. 
It can be nothing else.” 

“We shall see, madam!” said the 
man of business. 

“We shall see,” she assented. “ The 
gentleman is acquainted with Flint- 
winch ; and when the gentleman was in 
London last, I remember to have heard 
that he and Flintwinch had some enter- 
tainment or good-fellowship together. 
I am not in the way of knowing much 
that passes outside this room, and the 
jingle of little worldly things beyond it 
does not much interest me ; but I re- 
member to have heard that.” 

“Right, madam. It is true.” He 
laughed again, and whistled the burden 
of the tune he had sung at the door. 

“Therefore, Arthur,” said his moth- 
er, “ the gentleman comes here as an 
acquaintance, and no stranger; and it 
is much to be regretted that your un- 
reasonable temper should have found 
offence in him. I regret it. I say so 
to the gentleman. You will not say 
so, I know ; therefore I say it for my- 
self and Flintwinch, since with us two 
the gentleman’s business lies.” 

The key of the door below was now 
heard in the lock, and the door was 
heard to open and close. In due se- 
quence Mr. Flintwinch appeared ; on 
whose entrance the visitor rose from 
his chair laughing loud, and folded him 
in a close embrace. 

“ How goes it, my cherished friend ! ” 
said he. “ How goes the world, my 
Flintwinch? Rose-colored? So much 
the better, so much the better! Ah, 
but you look charming ! Ah, out you 
look young and fresh as the flowers of 
spring ! Ah, good little boy ! Brave 
child, brave child ! ” 

While heaping these compliments on 
Mr. Flintwinch, he rolled him about 
with a hand on each of his shoulders, 
until the staggerings of that gentleman, 
who under the circumstances was drier 
and more -twisted than ever, were like 
those of a teetotum nearly spent. 

“ I had a presentiment, last time, that 
we should be better and*more intimate- 


ly acquainted. Is it coming on you, 
Flintwinch ? Is it yet coming on ? ” 

“Why, no, sir,” retorted Mr. Flint- 
winch. “Not unusually. Hadn’t you 
better be seated? You have been call- 
ing for some more of that port, sir, 
I guess?” 

“ Ah ! Little joker ! Little pig ! ” 
cried the visitor. “Ha, ha, ha, ha!” 
And throwing Mr. Flintwinch away, as 
a closing piece of raillery, he sat down 
again. 

The amazement, suspicion, resent- 
ment, and shame with which Arthur 
looked on at all this, struck him dumb. 
Mr. Flintwinch, who had spun back- 
ward some two or three yards under 
the impetus last given to him, brought 
himself up with a face completely un- 
changed in its stolidity except as it was 
affected by shortness of breath, and 
looked hard at Arthur. Not a whit 
less reticent and wooden was Mr. Flint- 
winch, outwardly, than in the usual 
course of things ; the only perceptible 
difference in him being that the knot of 
cravat which was generally under his 
ear had worked round to the back of 
his head ; where it formed an ornament- 
al appendage, not unlike a bag-wig, 
and gave him something of a courtly ap- 
pearance. 

As Mrs. Clennam never removed her 
eyes from Blandois (on whom they had 
some effect, as a steady look has on a 
lower sort of dog), so Jeremiah never 
removed his from Arthur. It was as if 
they had tacitly agreed to take their dif- 
ferent provinces. Thus, in the ensuing 
silence, Jeremiah stood scraping his 
chin and looking at Arthur, as though 
he were trying to screw his thoughts out 
of him with an instrument. 

After a little, the visitor, as. if he felt 
the silence irksome, rose, and impatient- 
ly put himself with his back to the 
sacred fire which had burned through so 
many years. Thereupon Mrs. Clennam 
said, moving one of her hands for the 
first time, and moving it very slightly 
with an action of dismissal, — 

“ Please to leave us to our business, 
Arthur.” 

“ Mother, I do so with reluctance.” 

“ Never mind with what,” she re- 
turned, “ or with what not. Please to 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


318 

leave us. Come back at any other time 
when you may consider it a duty to bury 
half an hour wearily here. Good night. ” 

She held up her muffled fingers that 
he might touch them with his, accord- 
ing to their usual custom, and he stood 
over her wheeled chair to touch her face 
with his lips. He thought, then, that 
her cheek was more strained than usual, 
and that it was colder. As he followed 
the direction of her eyes, in rising again, 
towards Mr. Flintwinch’s good friend, 
Mr. Blandois, Mr. Blandois 'snapped 
his finger and thumb with one loud con- 
temptuous snap. 

“ I leave your — your business ac- 
quaintance in my mother’s room, Mr. 
Flintw'inch,” said Clennam, “ with a 
great deal of surprise and a great deal of 
unwillingness.” 

The person referred to snapped his 
finger and thumb again. 

“ Good night, mother.” 

“ Good night.” 

“ I had a friend once, my good com- 
rade Flintwinch,” said Blandois, stand- 
ing astride before the fire, and so evi- 
dently saying it to arrest Clennam’s 
retreating steps, that he lingered near 
the door, — “I had a friend once, whq, 
had heard so much of the dark side of 
this city and its ways, that he wouldn’t 
have confided himself alone, by night 
with two people who had an interest in 
getting him under the ground, — my 
faith ! not even in a respectable house 
like this, — unless he was bodily too 
strong for them. Bah ! What a pol- 
troon, my Flintwinch ! Eh? ” 

“A cur, sir.” 

“ Agreed ! A cur. But he wouldn’t 
have done it, my Flintwinch, unless he 
had known them to have the wall to 
silence him, without the powder. He 
wouldn’t have drunk from a glass of 
water, under such circumstances, — not 
even in a respectable house like this, 
my Flintwinch, — unless he had seen 
one of them drink first, and swallow 
too ! ” 

Disdaining to speak, and indeed not 
very well able, for he was half choking, 
Clennam only glanced at the visitor as 
he passed out. The visitor saluted him 
with another parting snap, and his nose 
came down over his mustache and his 


mustache went up under his nose, in an 
ominous and ugly smile. 

“For Heaven’s sake, Affery,” whis- 
pered Clennam, as she opened the door 
for him in the dark hall, and he groped 
his way to the sight of the night-sky, 
“what is going on here?” 

Her own appearance was sufficiently 
ghastly, standing in the dark with her 
apron throwm over her head, and speak- 
ing behind it in a low, deadened voice. 

“ Don’t ask me anything, Arthur. 
I ’ve been in a dream for ever so long. 
Go away ! ” 

He went out, and she shut the door 
upon him. He looked up at the win- 
dow's of his mother’s room, and the dim 
light, deadened by the yellow blinds, 
seemed to say a response after Affery, 
and to mutter, “ Don’t ask me anything. 
Go away ! ” 


CHAPTER XI. 

A LETTER FROM LITTLE DORRIT. 

Dear Mr. Clennam : — 

As I said in my last that it was best 
for nobody to write to me, and as my 
sending you another little letter can 
therefore give you no other trouble than 
the trouble of reading it (perhaps you 
may not find leisure for even that, 
though I hope you will some day), I am 
now going to devote an hour to writing 
to you again. This time, I write from 
Rome. 

We left Venice before Mr. and Mrs. 
Gowan did, but they w r ere not so long 
upon the road as we w'ere, and did not 
travel by the same way, and so when 
w'e arrived we found them in a lodging 
here, in* place called the Via Gregori- 
ana. I dare say you know it. 

Now, I am going to tell you all I can 
about them, because I know that is 
what you most w'ant to hear. Theirs is 
not a very comfortable lodging, but per- 
haps I thought it Tess so when I first 
saw it than you w'ould have done, be- 
cause you have been in many countries 
and have seen many different customs. 
Of course it is a far, far better place — 
millions of times — than any I have ever 
been used to until lately ; and I fancy 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


319 


I don’t look at it with my own eyes, 
but with hers. For it would be easy to 
see that she has always been brought up 
in a tender and happy home, even if she 
had not told me so with great love for it. 

Well, it is a rather bare lodging up a 
rather dark common staircase, and it 
is nearly all a large dull room, where 
Mr. Gowan paints. The windows are 
blocked up where any one could look 
out, and the walls have been all drawn 
over with chalk and charcoal by others 
who have lived there before, — O, I 
should think, for years ! There is a 
curtain more dust-colored than red, 
which divides it, and the part behind 
the curtain makes the private sitting- 
room. When I first saw her there she 
was alone, and her work had fallen out 
of her hand, and she was looking up at 
the sky shining through the tops of the 
windows. Pray do not be uneasy when 
I tell you, but it was not quite so airy, 
nor so bright, nor so cheerful, nor so 
happy and youthful altogether, as I 
should have liked it to be. 

On account of Mr. Gowan painting 
papa’s picture (which I am not quite 
convinced I should have known from 
the likeness if I had not seen him doing 
it), I have had more opportunities of 
being with her since then than I might 
have had without this fortunate chance. 
She is very much alone. Very much 
alone indeed. 

Shall I tell you about the second 
time I saw her ? I went one day, when 
it happened that I could run round by 
myself, at four or five o’clock in the 
afternoon. _ She was then dining alone, 
and her solitary dinner had been brought 
in from somewhere, over a kind of bra- 
zier with a fire in it, and she had no 
company or prospect of company, that 
I could see, but the old man who had 
brought it. He was telling her a long 
story (of robbers outside the walls be- 
ing taken up by a stone statue of a 
Saint) to entertain her, — as he said to 
me when I came out, “ because he had 
a daughter of- his own, though she was 
not so pretty.” 

I ought now to mention Mr. Gowan, 
before I say what little more I have to 
say about her. He must admire her 
beauty, and he must be proud of her, 


for everybody praises it, and he must 
be fond of her, and I do not doubt that 
he is, — but in his way. You know his 
way, and if it appears as careless and 
discontented in your eyes as it does 
in mine, I am not wrong in thinking 
that it might be better suited to her. 
If it does not seem so to you, I am 
quite sure I am wholly mistaken ; for 
your unchanged poor child confides in 
your knowledge and goodness more 
than she could ever tell you, if she was 
to try. But don’t be frightened, I am 
not going to try. 

Owing (as I think, if you think so, 
too) to Mr. Gowan’s unsettled and dis- 
satisfied way, he applies himself to his 
profession very little. He does nothing 
steadily or patiently ; but equally takes 
things up and throws them down, and 
does them, or leaves them undone, 
without caring about them. When I 
have heard him talking to papa during 
the sittings for the picture, I have 
sat wondering whether it could be that 
he has no belief in anybody else, be- 
cause he has no belief in himself. Is it 
so ? I wonder what you will say when 
you come to this ! I know how you 
will look, and I can almost hear the 
voice in which you would tell me on 
the Iron Bridge. 

Mr. Gowan goes out a good deal 
among what is considered the best com- 
pany here, — though he does not look 
as if he enjoyed it or liked it when he is 
with it, — and she sometimes accompa- 
nies him, but lately she has gone out 
very little. I think I have noticed that 
they have an inconsistent way of speak- 
ing about her, as if she had made some 
great self-interested success in marrying 
Mr. Gowan, though, at the same time, 
the very same people would not have 
dreamed of taking him for themselves 
or their daughters. Then he goes into 
the country besides, to think about mak- 
ing sketches ; and in all places where 
there are visitors he has a large ac- 
quaintance and is very well know’n. 
Besides all this, he has a friend who is 
much in his society both at home and 
away from home, though he treats this 
friend very coolly and is very uncertain 
in his behavior to him. I am quite 
sure (because she has told me so), that 


320 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


she does not like this friend. He is so 
revolting to me, too, that his being away 
from here, at present, is quite a relief 
to my mind. How much more to hers ! 

But what I particularly want you to 
know, and why I have resolved to tell 
you so much even while I am afraid it 
may make you a little uncomfortable 
without occasion, is this. She is so true 
and so devoted, and knows so complete- 
ly that- all her love and duty are his for- 
ever, that you may be certain she will 
love him, admire him, praise him, and 
conceal all his faults, until she dies. I 
believe she conceals them, and always 
will conceal them, even from herself. 
She has given him a heart that can nev- 
er be taken back ; and however much 
he may try it, he will never wear out its 
affection. You know the truth of this, 
as you know everything, far far better 
than I ; but I cannot help telling you 
what a nature she shows, and that you 
can never think too well of her. 

I have not yet called her by her name 
in this letter, but we are such friends 
now that I do so when we are quietly 
together, and she speaks to me by my 
# name, — I mean, not my Christian name, 
but the name you gave me. When she . 
began to call me Amy, I told her my 
short story, and that you had always 
called me Little Dorrit. I told her that 
the name was much dearer to me than 
any other, and so she calls me Little 
Dorrit too. 

Perhaps you have not heard from her 
father or mother yet, and may not know 
that she has a baby son. He was bom 
only two days ago, and just a week after 
they came. It has made them very 
happy. However, I must tell you, as I 
am to tell you all, that I fancy they are 
under a constraint with Mr. Gowan, 
and that they feel as if his mocking way 
with them was sometimes a slight given 
to their love for her. It was but yester- 
day when I was there, that I saw Mr. 
Meagles change color, and get up and 
go out, as if he was afraid that he might 
say so, unless he prevented himself by 
that means. Yet I am sure they are 
both so considerate, good-humored, and 
reasonable, that he might spare them. 

It is hard in him not to think of them a 
little more. 


I stopped at the last full-stop to read 
all this over. It looked at first as if I 
was taking on myself to understand and 
explain so much, that I was half in- 
clined not to send it. But when I had 
thought it over a little, I felt more hope- 
ful of your knowing at once that I had 
only been watchful for you, and had on- 
ly noticed what I think I have noticed 
because I was quickened by your inter- 
est in it. Indeed, you may be sure that 
is the truth. 

And now I have done with the sub- 
ject in the present letter, and have little 
left to say. 

We are all quite well, and Fanny im- 
proves every day. You can hardly 
think how kind she is to me, and what 
pains she takes with me. She has a 
lover, who has followed her, first all the 
way from Switzerland, and then all the 
way from Venice, and who has just con- 
fided to me that he means to follow her 
everywhere. I was much confused by 
his speaking to me about it, but he 
would. I did not know what to say, 
but at last I told him that I thought he 
had better not. For Fanny (but I did 
not tell him this) is much too spirited 
and clever to suit him. Still he said he 
would, all the same. I have no lover, 
of course. 

If you should ever get so far as this 
in this long letter, you will perhaps say, 
Surely Little Dorrit will not leave off 
without telling me something about her 
travels, and surely it is time she did. I 
think it is indeed, but I don’t know what 
to tell you. Since we left Venice we 
have been in a great many wnnderful 
places, Genoa and Florence among 
them, and have seen so many wonder- 
ful sights, that I am almost giddy when 
I think what a crowd they make. But 
you could tell me so much more about 
them than I can tell you, that why 
should I tire you with my accounts and 
descriptions ? 

Dear Mr. Clennam, as I had the cour- 
age to tell you what the familiar difficul- 
ties in my travelling mind were before, 
I will not be a coward now. One of 
my frequent thoughts is this : — Old as 
these cities are, their age itself is hardly 
so curious, to my reflections, as that 
they should have been in their places 


THE MERDLE PART\ 


























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LITTLE DORRIT. 


321 


all through those days when I did not 
even know of the existence of more than 
two or three of them, and when I scarce- 
ly knew of anything outside our old 
walls. There is something melancholy 
in it, and I don’t know why. When we 
went to see the famous leaning tower at 
Pisa, it was a bright sunny day, and it 
and the buildings near it looked so old, 
and the earth and sky looked so young, 
and its shadow on the ground was so 
soft and retired ! I could not at first 
think how beautiful it was, or how cu- 
rious, but I thought, “O, how many 
times when the shadow of the wall was 
falling on our room, and when that 
weary tread of feet was going up and 
down the yard, — O, how many times 
this place was just as quiet and lovely 
as it is to-day ! ” It quite overpowered 
me. My heart was so full, that tears 
burst out of my eyes, though I did what 
I could to restrain them. And I have 
the same feeling often — often. 

Do you know that since the change 
in our fortunes, though I appear to my- 
self to have dreamed more than before, 
I have always dreamed of myself as very 
young indeed ? I am not very old, you 
may say. No, but that is not what I 
mean. I have always dreamed of my- 
self as a child learning to do needle- 
work. I have often dreamed of myself 
as back there, seeing faces in the yard 
little known, and which I should have 
thought I had quite forgotten ; but, as 
often as not, I have been abroad here, 

— in Switzerland, or France, or Italy, 

— somewhere where we have been, — 
yet always as that little child. I have 
dreamed of going down to Mrs. Gener- 
al, with the patches on my clothes in 
which I can first remember myself. I 
have over and over again dreamed of 
taking my place at dinner at Venice, 
when we have had a large company, in 
the mourning for my poor mother which 
I wore when I was eight years old, and 
wore long after it was threadbare and 
would mend no more. It has been a 
great distress to me to think how irrec- 
oncilable the company would consider 
it with my father’s wealth, and how I 
should displease and disgrace him and 
Fanny and Edward by so plainly dis- 
closing what they wished to keep secret. 


But I have not grown out of the little 
child in thinking of it ; and at the self- 
same moment I have dreamed that I 
have sat with the heart-ache at table, 
calculating the expenses of the dinner, 
and quite distracting myself with think- 
ing how they were ever to be made 
good. I have never dreamed of the 
change in our fortunes itself; I have 
never dreamed of your coming back 
with me that memorable morning to 
break it ; I have never even dreamed of 
you. 

Dear Mr. Clennam, it is possible that 
I have thought of you — and others — 
so much by day, that I have no thoughts 
left to wander round you by night. For 
I must now confess to you that I suffer 
from homesickness, — that I long so 
ardently and earnestly for home as 
sometimes, when no one sees me, to 
pine for it. I cannot bear to turn my 
face further away from it. My heart is 
a little lightened when we turn towards 
it, even for a few miles, and w'ith the 
knowledge that we are soon to turn 
away again. So dearly do I love the 
scene of my poverty and your kindness. 

0 so dearly, O so dearly ! 

Heaven knows when your poor child 
will see England again. We are all 
fond of the life here (except me), and 
there are no plans for our return. My 
dear father talks of a visit to London 
late in this next spring, on some affairs 
connected with the property, but I have 
no hope that he will bring me with 
him. 

I have tried to get on a little better 
under Mrs. General’s instruction, and 

1 hope I am not quite so dull as I used 
to be. I have begun to speak and un- 
derstand, almost easily, the hard lan- 
guages I told you about. I did not 
remember, at the moment when I wrote 
last, that you know them both ; but I 
remembered it afterwards, and it helped 
me on. God bless you, dear Mr. Clen- 
nam. Do not forget 

Your ever grateful and affectionate 
Little Dorrit. 

P.S. — Particularly remember that 
Minnie Gowan deserves the best re- 
membrance in which you can hold her. 
You cannot think too generously or too 


21 


322 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


highly of her. I forgot Mr. Pancks 
last time. Please, if you should see 
him, give him your Little Dorrit’s kind 
regard. He was very good to Little D. 


CHAPTER XII. 

IN WHICH A GREAT PATRIOTIC CONFER- 
ENCE IS HOLDEN. 

The famous name of Merdle became, 
every day, more famous in the land. 
Nobody knew that the Merdle of such 
high renown had ever done any good to 
any one, alive or dead, or to any earthly 
thing ; nobody knew that he had any 
capacity or utterance of any sort in him, 
which had ever thrown, for any crea- 
ture, the feeblest farthing-candle ray of 
light on any path of duty or diversion, 
pain or pleasure, toil or rest, fact or 
fancy, among the multiplicity of paths 
in the labyrinth trodden by. the sons of 
Adam ; nobody had the smallest reason 
for supposing the clay of which this ob- 
ject of worship was made to be other 
9 than the commonest clay, with as clogged 
a w'ick smouldering inside of it as ever 
kept an image of humanity from tum- 
bling to pieces. All people knew (or 
thought they knew) that he had made 
himself immensely rich ; and, for that 
reason alone, prostrated themselves be- 
fore him, more degradedly and less ex- 
cusably than the darkest savage creeps 
out of his hole in the ground to propiti- 
ate, in sonfg log or reptile, the Deity of 
his benighted soul. 

Nay, the high priests of this worship 
had the man before them as a protest 
against their meanness. The multitude 
worshipped on trust, — though always 
distinctly knowing why, — but the offi- 
ciators at the altar had the man habitu- 
ally in their view. They sat at his 
feasts, and he sat at theirs. There 
was a spectre always attendant on 
him, saying to these high priests, 
“ Are such the signs you trust and love 
to honor, — this head, these eyes, this 
mode of speech, the tone and manner of 
this man? You are the levers of the 
Circumlocution Office, and the rulers of 
men. When half a dozen of you fall 


out by the ears, it seems that Mother 
Earth can give birth to no other rulers. 
Does your qualification lie in the supe- 
rior knowledge of men, which accepts, 
courts, and puffs this man ? Or, if you 
are competent to judge aright the signs 
I never fail to show you when he ap- 
pears among you, is your superior hon- 
esty your qualification ? ” Two rather 
ugly questions these, always going about 
town with Mr. Merdle ; and there was 
a tacit agreement that they must be 
stifled. 

In Mrs. Merdle’s absence abroad, 
Mr. Merdle still kept the great house 
open for the passage through it of a 
stream of visitors. A few of these took 
affable possession of the establishment. 
Three or four ladies of. distinction and 
liveliness used to say to one another, 
“ Let us dine at our dear Merdle’s next 
Thursday. Whom shall we have ? ” 
Our dear Merdle w'ould then receive 
his instructions ; and w'ould sit heavily 
among the company at table, and wan- 
der lumpishly about his draw'ing-rooms 
afterwards, only remarkable for appear- 
ing to have nothing to do with the en- 
tertainment beyond being in its way. 

The Chief Butler, the Avenging 
Spirit of this great man’s life, relaxed 
nothing of his severity. He looked on 
at these dinners when the bosom w r as 
not there, as he looked on at other din- 
ners when the bosom was there ; and 
his eye was a basilisk to Mr. Merdle. 
He w^as a hard man, and would never 
bate an ounce of plate or a bottle of 
wine. He would not allow a dinner to 
be given, unless it was up to his mark. 
He set forth the table for his own digni- 
ty. If the guests chose to partake of 
what was served, he saw no objection ; 
but it was served for the maintenance of 
his rank. As he stood by the sideboard 
he seemed to announce, “ I have ac- 
cepted office to look at this which is 
now before me, and to look at nothing 
less than this.” If he missed the pre- 
siding bosom, it was as a part of his own 
state, of which he was, from unavoida- 
ble circumstances, temporarily deprived. 
Just as he might have missed a centre- 
piece, or a choice wine-cooler, which 
had been sent to the banker’s. 

Mr. Merdle issued invitations for a 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


323 


Barnacle dinner. Lord Decimus was to 
be there, Mr. Tite Barnacle was to be 
there, the pleasant young Barnacle was 
to be there ; and the Chorus of Parlia- 
mentary Barnacles who went about the 
provinces when the House was up, 
warbling the praises of their Chief, were 
to be represented there. It was under- 
stood to be a great occasion. Mr. Mer- 
dle was going to take up the Barnacles. 
Some delicate little negotiations had oc- 
curred between him and the noble Deci- 
mus, — the young Barnacle of engaging 
manners acting as negotiator, — and 
Mr. Merdle had decided to cast the 
weight of his great probity and great 
riches into the Barnacle scale. Job- 
bery was suspected by the malicious ; 
perhaps because it was indisputable that 
if the adherence of the immortal Enemy 
of Mankind could have been secured by 
a job, the Barnacles would have jobbed 
him, — for the good of the country, for 
the good of the country. 

Mrs. Merdle had written to- this 
magnificent spouse of hers, whom it was 
heresy to regard as anything less than 
all the British Merchants since the 
days of Whittington rolled into one, 
and gilded three feet deep all over, — 
had written to this spouse of hers sev- 
eral letters from Royie, in quick succes- 
sion, urging upon him with importunity 
that now or never was the time to pro- 
vide for Edmund Sparkler. Mrs. Mer- 
dle had shown him that the case' of 
Edmund was urgent, and that infinite 
advantages might result from his hav- 
ing some good thing directly. In the 
grammar of Mrs. Merdle’s verbs on 
this momentous subject, there w'as only 
one Mood, the Imperative ; and that 
Mood had only one Tense, the Present. 
Mrs. Merdle’s verbs were so pressingly 
presented to Mr. Merdle to conjugate, 
that his sluggish blood and his long 
coat-cuffs became quite agitated. 

In which state of agitation, Mr. Mer- 
dle, evasively rolling his eyes round the 
Chief Butler’s shoes without raising 
them to the index of that stupendous 
creature’s thoughts, had signified to 
him his intention of giving a special din- 
ner : not a very large dinner, but a very 
special dinner. The Chief Butler had 
signified, in return, that he had no ob- 


jection to look on at the most expensive 
thing in that way that could be done : 
and the day of the dinner was now 
come. 

Mr. Merdle stood in one of his draw- 
ing-rooms, with his back to the fire, 
waiting for the arrival of his important 
guests. He seldom or never took the 
liberty of standing with his back to his 
fire, unless he was quite alone In the 
presence of the Chief Butler, he could 
not have done such a deed. He would 
have clasped himself by the wrists in 
that constabulary manner of his, and 
have paced up and down the hearth-rug, 
or gone creeping about among the rich 
objects of furniture, if his oppressive 
retainer had appeared in the room at 
that very moment. The sly shadows 
which seemed to dart out of hiding 
when the fire rose, and to dart back in- 
to it when the fire fell, were sufficient 
witnesses of his making himself so 
easy. They were even more than suffi- 
cient, if his uncomfortable glances at 
them might be taken to mean anything. 

Mr. Merdle’s right hand was filled 
with the evening paper, and the even- 
ing paper was full of Mr. Merdle. His 
wonderful enterprise, his wonderful 
wealth, his wonderful Bank, were the 
fattening food of the evening paper that 
night. The wonderful Bank, of which 
he was the chief projector, establisher, 
and manager, was the latest of the 
many Merdle wonders. So modest 
was Mr. Merdle withal, in the midst of 
these splendid achievements, that he 
k looked far more like a man^in posses- 
sion of his house under a distraint, 
than a commercial Colossus bestriding 
his own hearth-rug, while the little ships 
were sailing into dinner. 

Behold the vessels coming into port ! 
The engaging young Barnacle was the 
first arrival ; but Bar overtook him on 
the staircase. Bar, strengthened as usual 
with his double eye-glass and his little 
jury droop, was overjoyed to see the 
engaging young Barnacle ; and opined 
that we were going to sit in Banco, as 
we lawyers called it, to take a special 
argument ? . 

“Indeed,” said the sprightly young 
Barnacle, whose name was Ferdinand: 
“ how so ? ” 


324 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


“Nay,” smiled Bar. “If you don’t 
know, how can / know? You are in 
the innermost sanctuary of the temple ; 
/ am one of the admiring concourse on 
the plain without.” 

Bar could be light in hand, or heavy 
in hand, according to the customer he 
had to deal with. With Ferdinand Bar- 
nacle he was gossamer. Bar was like- 
wise always modest and self-deprecia- 
tory — in his w r ay. Bar was a man of 
great variety ; but one leading thread ran 
through the woof of all his patterns. 
Every man with whom he had to do 
was in his eyes a juryman ; and he 
must get that juryman over, if he could. 

“Our illustrious host and friend,” 
said Bar; “our shining mercantile 
star ; — - going into politics ? ” 

“Going? He has been in Parlia- 
ment some time, you know,” returned 
the engaging young Barnacle. 

“True,” said Bar, with his light- 
comedy laugh for special jurymen : 
which was a very different thing from 
his law-comedy laugh for comic trades- 
men on common juries : “ he has been 
in Parliament for some time. Yet 
hitherto our star has been a vacillating 
and wavering star ? Humph ? ” 

An average witness would have been 
seduced by the Humph? into an af- 
firmative answer. But Ferdinand 
Barnacle looked knowingly at Bar as 
they strolled up stairs, and gave him 
no answer at all. 

“Just so, just so,” said Bar, nodding 
his head, for he was not to be put off in 
that way, “sand therefore I spoke of our 
sitting in Banco to take a special argu- 
ment, — meaning this to be a high and 
solemn occasion, when, as Captain 
Macheath says, ‘the Judges are met: 
a terrible show ! ’ We lawyers are suf- 
ficiently liberal, you see, to quote the 
Captain, though the Captain is severe 
upon us. Nevertheless, I think I could 
put in evidence an admission of the 
Captain’s,” said Bar, with a little jo- 
cose roll of his head ; for, in his legal 
current of speech, he always assumed 
the air of rallying himself with the best 
grace in the world : “an admission of 
the Captain’s that Law, in the gross, is 
at least intended to be impartial. For 
what says the Captain, if I quote him 


correctly, — and if not,” with a light- 
comedy touch of his double eye-glass 
on his companion’s shoulder, “my 
learned friend will set me right : — 

‘ Since laws were made for every degree, 

To curb vice in others as well as in me, 

I wonder we ha’n’t better company 
Upon Tyburn Tree ! ’ ” 

These w^ords brought them to the 
drawing-room, where Mr. Merdle stood 
before the fire. So immensely astound- 
ed was Mr. Merdle by the entrance of 
Bar with such a reference in his mouth, 
that Bar explained himself to have been 
quoting Gay. “ Assuredly not one of 
our Westminster Hall authorities,” 
said he, “ but still no despicable one to 
a man possessing the largely practical 
Mr. Merdle’s knowledge of the world.” 

Mr. Merdle looked as if he thought 
he would say something, but subse- 
quently looked as if he thought he 
would n’t. The interval afforded time 
for Bishop to be announced. 

Bishop came in with meekness, and 
yet with a strong and rapid step, as if 
he wanted to get his seven-league dress 
shoes on, and go round the world to 
see that everybody was in a satisfac- 
tory state. Bishop had no idea that 
there was anything significant in the 
occasion. That was the most remark- 
able trait in his demeanor. He was 
crisp, fresh, cheerful, affable, bland ; 
but so surprisingly innocent. 

Bar slided up to prefer his politest in- 
quiries in reference to the health of 
Mrs. Bishop. Mrs. Bishop had been a 
little unfortunate in the article of taking 
cold at a Confirmation, but otherwise 
was well. Young Mr. Bishop was also 
well. He was down, with his young 
wife and little family, at his Cure of 
Souls. 

The representatives of the Barnacle 
Chorus dropped in next, and Mr. Mer- 
dle’s physician dropped in next. Bar, 
who had a bit of one eye and a bit of 
his double eye-glass for every one who 
came in at the door, no matter with 
whom he was conversing or what he 
was talking about, got among them 
all by some skilful means, without be- 
ing seen to get at them, and touched 
each individual gentleman of the jury 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


325 


on his own individual favorite spot. 
With some of the Chorus, he laughed 
about the sleepy member who had gone 
out into the lobby the other night, and 
voted the wrong way ; with others, he 
deplored that innovating spirit in the 
time which could not even be prevented 
from taking an unnatural interest in 
the public service and the public 
money ■ with the physician he had a 
word to say about the geperal health ; 
he had also a little information to ask 
him for, concerning a professional man, 
of unquestioned erudition and polished 
manners, — but those credentials in 
their highest development he believed 
were the possession of other professors 
of the healing art (jury droop), — whom 
he had happened to have in the witness- 
box the day before yesterday, and from 
whom he had elicited in cross-examina- 
tion that he claimed to be one of the 
exponents of this new mode of treat- 
ment which appeared to Bar to — eh ? 
— well, Bar thought so ; Bar had 
thought, and hoped. Physician would 
tell him so. Without presuming to de- 
cide where doctors disagreed, it did ap- 
pear to Bar, viewing it as a question of 
common sense and not of so-called le- 
gal penetration, that this new system 
was — might he, in the presence of so 
great an Authority, say — Humbug ? 
Ah? Fortified by such encouragement 
he could venture to say Humbug ; and 
now Bar’s mind was relieved. 

Mr. Tite Barnacle, who, like Dr. 
Johnson’s celebrated acquaintance, had 
only one idea in his head, and that was 
a wrong one, had appeared by this time. 
This eminent gentleman and Mr. Mer- 
dle, seated diverse ways and with rumi- 
nating aspects, on a yellow ottoman in 
the light of the fire, holding no verbal 
communication with each other, bore a 
strong general resemblance to the two 
cows in the Cuyp picture over against 
them. 

But now Lord Decimus arrived. 
The Chief Butler, who up to this time 
had limited himself to a branch of his 
usual function by looking at the compa- 
ny as they entered (and that, with more 
of defiance than favor), put himself so 
far out of his way as to come up stairs 
with him and announce him. Lord 


Decimus being an overpowering peer, 
a bashful young member of the Lower 
House, who was the last fish but one 
caught by the Barnacles, and who had 
been invited on this occasion to com- 
memorate his capture, shut his eyes 
when his lordship came in. 

Lord Decimus, nevertheless, was glad 
to see the Member. He was also glad 
to see Mr. Merdle, glad to see Bishop, 
glad to see Bar, glad to see Physician, 
glad to see Tite Barnacle, glad to see 
Chorus, glad to see Ferdinand his pri- 
vate secretary. Lord Decimus, though 
one of the greatest of the earth, was 
not remarkable for ingratiatory man- 
ners, and Ferdinand had coached him 
up to the point of noticing all the fel- 
lows he might find there, and saying he 
was glad to see them. When he had 
achieved this rush of vivacity and con- 
descension, his lordship composed him- 
self into the picture after Cuyp, £#id 
made a third cow in the group. 

Bar, who felt that he had got all the 
rest of the jury and must now lay hold 
of the Foreman, soon came sliding up, 
double eye-glass in hand. Bar tendered 
the weather, as a subject neatly aloof 
from official reserve, for the Foreman’s 
consideration. Bar said that he was 
told (as everybody always is told, though 
who tells them, and why, will forever 
remain a mystery), that there was to be 
no wall-fruit this year. Lord Decimus 
had not heard anything amiss of his 
peaches, but rather believed, if his peo- 
ple were correct, he was to have no ap- 
ples. No apples? Bar was lost in as- 
tonishment and concern. It would have 
been all one to him, in reality, if there 
had not been a pippin on the surface of 
the earth, but his show of interest in this 
apple question was positively painful. 
Now, to what, Lord Decimus, — for we 
troublesome lawyers loved to gather 
information, and could never tell how 
useful it might prove to us, — to what, 
Lord Decimus, was this to be attrib- 
uted? Lord Decimus could not under- 
take to propound any theory about 
it. This might have stopped another 
man ; but Bar, sticking to him fresh as 
ever, said, “As to pears, now ? ” 

Long after Bar got made Attorney- 
General, this was told of him as a mas- 


326 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


ter-stroke. Lord Decimus had a rem- 
iniscence about a pear-tree, formerly 
growing in a garden near the back of his 
dame’s house at Eton, upon which pear- 
tree the only joke of his life perennially 
bloomed. It was a joke of a compact 
and portable nature, turning on the dif- 
ference between Eton pears and Parlia- 
mentary pairs; but it was a joke, a re- 
fined relish of which would seem to 
have appeared to Lord Decimus im- 
possible to be had without a thorough 
and intimate acquaintance with the 
tree. Therefore, the story at first had 
no idea of such a tree, sir, then gradu- 
ally found it in winter, carried it through 
the changing seasons, saw it bud, saw 
it blossom, saw it bear fruit, saw the 
fruit ripen, in short, cultivated the tree 
in that diligent and minute manner be- 
fore it got out of the bedroom window 
to steal the fruit, that many thanks had 
been offered up by belated listeners for 
the tree’s having been planted and 
grafted prior to Lord Decimus’s time. 
Bar’s interest in apples was so over- 
topped by the wrapt suspense in which 
he pursued the changes of these pears, 
from the moment when Lord Decimus 
solemnly opened with “Your mention- 
ing pears recalls to my remembrance a 
pear-tree,” down to the rich conclusion, 
“ And so we pass, through the various 
changes of life, from Eton pears to Par- 
liamentary pairs,” that he had to go 
down stairs with Lord Decimus, and 
even then to be seated next to him at 
table, in order that he might hear the 
anecdote out. By that time, Bar felt 
that he had secured the Foreman, and 
might go to dinner with a good appe- 
tite. 

It was a dinner to provoke an appe- 
tite, though he had not had one. The 
rarest dishes, sumptuously cooked and 
sumptuously served ; the choicest fruits ; 
the most exquisite wines ; marvels of 
workmanship in gold and silver, china 
and glass; innumerable things delicious 
to the senses of taste, smell, and sight 
were insinuated into its composition. 
O, what a wonderful man this Merdle, 
what a great man, what a master man, 
how blessedly and enviably endowed, 
— in one word, what a rich man ! 

He took his usual poor eighteen-pen- 


nyw’orth of food, in his usual indigestive 
way, and had as little to say for himself 
as ever a wonderful man had. For- 
tunately Lord Decimus was one of those 
sublimities who have no occasion to be 
talked to, for they can be at any time 
sufficiently occupied with the contem- 
plation of their own greatness. This 
enabled the bashful young member to 
keep his eyes open long enough at a 
time to see his dinner. But whenever 
Lord Decimus spoke, he shut them 
again. 

The agreeable young Barnacle, and 
Bar, were the talkers of the party. 
Bishop would have been exceedingly 
agreeable also, but that his innocence 
stood in his way. He was so soon left 
behind. When there was any little 
hint of anything being in the wind, 
he got lost directly. Worldly affairs 
were too much for him ; he could n’t 
make them out at all. 

This was observable when Bar said, 
incidentally, that he was happy to have 
heard that we were soon to have the 
advantage of enlisting, on the good 
side, the sound and plain sagacity — 
not demonstrative or ostentatious, but 
thoroughly sound and practical — of 
our fyiend Mr. Sparkler. 

Ferdinand Barnacle laughed, and 
said, O yes, he believed so. A vote 
was a vote, and always acceptable. 

Bar was sorry to miss our good friend 
Mr. Sparkler to-day, Mr. Merdle. 

“ He is away with Mrs. Merdle,” 
returned that gentleman, slowly coming 
out of a long abstraction, in the course 
of which he had been fitting a table-, 
spoon up his sleeve. “It is not indis- 
pensable for him to be on the spot.” 

“The magic name of Merdle,” said 
Bar, with the jury droop, “ no doubt 
will suffice for all.” 

“Why — yes — I believe so,” as- 
sented Mr. Merdle, putting the spoon 
aside, and clumsily hiding each of his 
hands in the coat-cuff of the other 
hand. “ I believe the people in my 
interest dowm there will not make any 
difficulty.” 

“ Model people ! ” said Bar. 

“ I am glad you approve of them,” 
said Mr. Merdle. 

“And the people of those other two 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


327 


places, now,” pursued Bar, with a 
bright twinkle in his keen eye, as it 
slightly turned in the direction of his 
magnificent neighbor ; “ we lawyers 
are always curious, always inquisitive, 
always picking up odds and ends for 
our patchwork minds, since there is no 
knowing when and where they may fit 
into some corner ; — the people of those 
other two places, now ? Do they yield 
so laudably to the vast and cumulative 
influence of such enterprise and such 
renown, — do those little rills become 
absorbed so quietly and easily, and, as 
it were, by the influence of natural 
laws, so beautifully in the swoop of 
the majestic stream as it flop's upon its 
wondrous way enriching the surround- 
ing lands, — that their course is perfectly 
to be calculated, and distinctly to be 
predicated ? ” 

Mr. Merdle, a little troubled by 
Bar’s eloquence, looked fitfully about 
the nearest salt-cellar for some mo- 
ments, and then said, hesitating, — 

“ They are perfectly aware, sir, of 
their duty to Society. They will return 
anybody I send to them for that pur- 
pose.” 

“Cheering to know,” said Bar, — 
“ cheering to know.” 

The three places in question were 
three little rotten holes in this Island, 
containing three little ignorant, drunk- 
en, guzzling, dirty, out-of-the-way con- 
stituencies, that had reeled into Mr. 
Merdle’s pocket. Ferdinand Barnacle 
laughed in his easy way, and airily said 
they were a nice set of fellows. Bishop, 
mentally perambulating among paths 
of peace, was altogether swallowed up 
in absence of mind. 

“Pray,” asked Lord Decimus, cast- 
ing his eyes around the table, “what 
is this story I have heard of a gentle- 
man long confined in a debtor’s prison 
proving to be of a wealthy family, and 
having come into the inheritance of a 
large sum of money ? I have met with 
a variety of allusions to it. Do you 
know anything of it, Ferdinand?” 

“I only know this much,” said Fer- 
dinand, “ that he has given the De- 
partment with which I have the honor to 
be associated — ” this sparkling young 
Barnacle threw off the phrase sportive- 


ly, as who should say, We know all 
about these forms of speech, but we 
must keep it up, we must keep the 
game alive — “no end of trouble, and 
has put us into innumerable fixes.” 

“Fixes?” repeated Lord Decimus, 
with a majestic pausing and pondering 
on the word that made the bashful 
member shut his eyes quite tight. 
“ Fixes?” 

“ A very perplexing business in- 
deed,” observed Mr. Tite Barnacle, 
with an air of grave resentment. 

“What,” said Lord Decimus, “was 
the character of his business ; what 
was the nature of these — a — fixes, 
Ferdinand? ” 

“O, it’s a good story, as a story,” 
returned that gentleman ; “as good a 
thing of its kind as need be. This 
Mr. Dorrit (his name is Dorrit) had 
incurred a responsibility to us, ages 
before the fairy came out of the Bank 
and gave him his fortune, under a 
bond he had signed for the performance 
of a contract which was not at all 
performed. He was a partner in a 
house in some large way, — spirits, or 
buttons, or wine, or blacking, or 
oatmeal, or woollen, or pork, or 
hooks and eyes, or iron, or treacle, or 
shoes, or something or other that was 
wanted for troops, or seamen, or some- 
body, — and the house burst, and we 
being among the creditors, detainers 
were lodged on the part of the Crown 
in a scientific manner, and all the rest 
of it. When the fairy had appeared 
and he wanted to pay us off, Egad we 
had got into such an exemplary state 
of checking and counter-checking, 
signing and counter-signing, that it 
was six months before we knew how 
to take the money, or how to give a 
receipt for it. It was a triumph of 
public business,” said this handsome 
young Barnacle, laughing heartily. 
“ You never saw such a lot of forms 
in your life. ‘Why,’ the attorney said 
to me one day, ‘ if I wanted this office 
to give me two or three thousand 
ounds instead of take it, I couldn’t 
ave more trouble about it.’ ‘You 
are right, old fellow,’ I told him, ‘and 
in future you ’ll know that we have 
something to do here.’ ” The pleasant 


328 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


young Barnacle finished by once more 
laughing heartily. He was a very easy, 
pleasant fellow indeed, and his man- 
ners were exceedingly winning. 

Mr. Tite Barnacle’s view of the busi- 
ness was of a less airy character. He 
took it ill that Mr. Dorrit had troubled 
the Department by wanting to pay the 
money, and considered it a grossly in- 
formal thing to do after so many years. 
But, Mr. Tite Barnacle was a buttoned- 
up man, and consequently a weighty 
one. All buttoned-up men are weighty. 
All buttoned-up men are believed in. 
Whether or no the reserved and never- 
exercised power of unbuttoning fasci- 
nates mankind ; whether or no wisdom 
is supposed to condense and augment 
when buttoned up, and to evaporate 
when unbuttoned ; it is certain that the 
man to whom importance is accorded is 
the buttoned-up man. Mr. Tite Bar- 
nacle never would have passed for half 
his current value, unless his coat had 
been always buttoned up to his white 
cravat. 

“May I ask,” said Lord Decimus, 
“if Mr. Darrit — or Dorrit — has any 
family? ” 

Nobody else replying, the host said, 
“He has two daughters, my lord.” 

“O, you are acquainted with him?” 
asked Lord Decimus. 

“Mrs. Merdle is. Mr. Sparkler is, 
too. In fact,” said Mr. Merdle, “ I 
rather believe that one of the young 
ladies has made an impression on Ed- 
mund Sparkler. He is susceptible, and 
— I — think — the conquest — ” Here 
Mr. Merdle stopped, and looked at the 
tablecloth, as he usually did when he 
found himself observed or listened to. 

Bar was uncommonly pleased to find 
that the Merdle family and this family 
had already been brought into contact. 
He submitted, in a low voice across the 
table to Bishop, that it was a kind of 
analogical illustration of those physical 
laws, in virtue of which Like flies to 
Like. He regarded this power of at- 
traction in wealth to draw wealth to 
it, as something remarkably interesting 
and curious, — something indefinably 
allied to the loadstone *and gravitation. 
Bishop, who had ambled back to earth 
again when the present theme was 


broached, acquiesced. He said it was 
indeed highly important to Society that 
one in the trying situation of unexpect- 
edly finding himself invested with a 
power for good or for evil in Society 
should become, as it were, merged in 
the superior power of a more legitimate 
and more gigantic growth, the influence 
of which (as in the case of our friend, at 
whose board we sat) was habitually 
exercised in harmony with the best 
interests of Society. Thus, instead of 
two rival and contending flames, a 
larger and a lesser, each burning with 
a lurid and uncertain glare, we had a 
blended and a softened light whose 
genial ray diffused an equable warmth 
throughout the land. Bishop seemed 
to like his own way of putting the case 
very much, and rather dwelt upon it ; 
Bar, meanwhile (not to throw away a 
juryman), making a show of sitting at 
his feet and feeding on his precepts. 

The dinner and dessert being three 
hours’ long, the bashful member cooled 
in the shadow of Lord Decimus faster 
than he warmed with food and drink, 
and had but a chilly time of it. Lord 
Decimus, like a tall tower in a flat 
country, seemed to project himself 
across the tablecloth, hide the light 
from the honorable member* cool the 
honorable member’s marrow, and give 
him a w’oful idea of distance. When 
he asked this unfortunate traveller to 
take wine, he encompassed his fal- 
tering steps with the gloomiest of 
shades; and when he said, “Your 
health, sir ! ” all around him was bar- 
renness and desolation. 

At length Lord Decimus, w'ith a cof- 
fee-cup in his hand, began to hover 
about among the pictures, and to cause 
an interesting speculation to arise in 
all minds as to the probabilities of his 
ceasing to hover, and enabling the 
smaller birds to flutter up stairs ; which 
could not be done until he had urged 
his noble pinions in that direction. 
After some delay, and several stretches 
of his wings which came to nothing, he 
soared to the drawing-rooms. 

And here a difficulty arose, which al- 
ways does arise, when two people are 
specially brought together at a dinner 
to confer with one another. Everybody 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


329 


(except Bishop, who had no suspicion of 
it) knew perfectly well that this dinner 
had been eaten and drunk, specifically 
to the end that Lord Decimus and Mr. 
Merdle should have five minutes’ con- 
versation together. The opportunity so 
elaborately prepared was now arrived, 
and it seemed from that moment that 
no mere human ingenuity could so much 
as get the two chieftains into the same 
room. Mr. Merdle and his noble guest 
persisted in prowling about at opposite 
ends of the perspective. It was in vain 
for the engaging Ferdinand to bring 
Lord Decimus to look at the bronze 
horses near Mr. Merdle. Then Mr. 
Merdle evaded, and wandered away. 
It was in vain for him to bring Mr. 
Merdle to Lord Decimus to tell him 
the history of the unique Dresden vases. 
Then Lord Decimus evaded and wan- 
dered away, while he was getting his 
man up to the mark. 

“ Did you ever see such a thing as 
this? ” said Ferdinand to«Bar, when he 
had been baffled twenty times. 

“Often,” returned Bar. 

“ Unless I butt one of them into an 
appointed corner, and you butt the 
other,” said Ferdinand, “ it will not 
come off after all.” 

“ Very good,” said Bar. “ I’ll butt 
Merdle, if you like ; but, not my lord.” 

Ferdinand laughed, in the midst of 
his vexation. “Confound them both ! ” 
said he, looking at his watch. “ I want 
to get away. Why the deuce can’t 
they come together ! They both know 
what they want and mean to do. Look 
at them ! ” 

They were still looming at opposite 
ends of the perspective, each with an 
absurd pretence of not having the other 
on his mind, which could not have been 
more transparently ridiculous though 
his real mind had been chalked on his 
back. Bishop, who had just now made 
a third with Bar and Ferdinand, but 
whose innocence had again cut him out 
of the subject and washed him in sweet 
oil, was seen to approach Lord Decimus 
and glide into conversation. 

“ I must get Merdle’s doctor to catch 
and secure him, I suppose,” said Fer- 
dinand ; “ and then I must lay hold of 
my illustrious kinsman, and decoy him 


if I can, — drag him if I can’t, — to 
the conference.” 

“ Since you do me the honor,” said 
Bar, with his slyest smile, “ to ask for 
my poor aid, it shall be yours with the 
greatest pleasure. I don’t think this is 
to be done by one man. But if you will 
undertake to pen my lord into that 
farthest drawing-room where he is now 
so profoundly engaged, I will undertake 
to bring our dear Merdle into the pres- 
ence, without the possibility of getting 
away. 

“ Done 1 ” said Ferdinand. “ Done ! ” 
said Bar. 

Bar was a sight wondrous to behold, 
and full of matter, when, jauntily waving 
his double eye-glass by its ribbon, and 
jauntily drooping to an Universe of 
Jurymen, he, in the most accidental 
manner ever seen, found himself at Mr. 
Merdle’s shoulder, and embraced that 
opportunity of mentioning a little point 
to him on which he particularly wished 
to be guided by the light of his prac- 
tical knowledge. (Here he took Mr. 
Merdle’s arm and walked him gently 
away.) A banker, whom we would call 
A. B. advanced a considerable sum of 
money, which we would call fifteen 
thousand pounds, to a client or cus- 
tomer of his, whom he would call P. Q. 
(Here, as they were getting towards 
Lord Decimus, he held Mr. Merdle 
tight.) As a security for the repayment 
of this advance to P. Q. whom we 
would call a widow lady, there were 
placed in A. B.’s hands the title deeds 
of a freehold estate, which we -would 
call Blinkiter Doddles. Now, the point 
was this. A limited right of felling and 
lopping in the woods of Blinkiter Dod- 
dles lay in the son of P. Q. then past 
his majority, and whom we would call 
X. Y. — but really this was too bad ! 
In the presence of Lord Decimus, to 
detain the host with chopping our dry 
chaff of law, was really too bad ! An- 
other time ! Bar was truly repentant, 
and would not say another syllable. 
Would Bishop favor him with half a 
dozen words? (He had now set Mr. 
Merdle down on a couch, side by side 
with Lord Decirrius, and to it they must 
go now or never.) 

And now the rest of the company, 


330 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


highly excited and interested, always 
excepting Bishop who had not the 
slightest idea that anything was going 
on, formed in one group round the fire 
in the next drawing-room, and pretended 
to be chatting easily on an infinite vari- 
ety of small topics, w r hile everybody’s 
thoughts and eyes were secretly straying 
towards the secluded pair. The Chorus 
were excessively nervous, perhaps as 
laboring under the dreadful apprehen- 
sion that some good thing was going to 
be diverted from them. Bishop alone 
talked steadily and evenly. He con- 
versed with the great Physician on that 
relaxation of the throat with which 
young curates were too frequently af- 
flicted, and on the means of lessening 
the great prevalence of that disorder in 
the Church. Physician, as a general 
rule, was of opinion that the best way 
to avoid it was to know how to read, 
before you made a profession of reading. 
Bishop said dubiously, did he really 
think so ? And Physician said, decided- 
ly, yes, he did. 

Ferdinand, meanwhile, was the only 
one of the party who skirmished on the 
outside of the circle ; he kept about 
midway between it and the two, as if 
some sort of surgical operation w r ere be- 
ing performed by Lord Decimus on 
Mr. Merdle, or by Mr. Merdle on Lord 
Decimus, and his services might at any 
moment be required as Dresser. In 
fact, within a quarter of an hour, Lord 
Decimus called to him, “Ferdinand!” 
and he went, and took his place in the 
conference for some five minutes more. 
Then a half-suppressed gasp broke out 
among the Chorus ; for Lord Decimus 
rose to take his leave. Again coached 
up by F erdinand to the point of making 
himself popular, he shook hands in the 
most brilliant manner with the whole 
company, and even said to Bar, “ I hope 
you were not bored by my pears ? ” 
To which Bar retorted, “ Eton, my 
lord, or Parliamentary?” neatly show- 
ing that he had mastered the joke, and 
delicately insinuating that he could 
never forget it while his life remained. 

All the grave impprtance that was 
buttoned up in Mr. Tite Barnacle took 
itself away next ; and Ferdinand took 
himself away next, to the opera. Some 


of the rest lingered a little, marrying 
golden liqueur glasses to Buhl tables 
with sticky rings : on the desperate 
chance of Mr. Merdle’s saying some- 
thing. But Mr. Merdle, as usual, 
oozed sluggishly and muddily about his 
drawing-room, saying never a word. 

In a day or two it was announced to 
all the town, that Edmund Sparkler, 
Esquire, son-in-law of the eminent Mr. 
Merdle of world-wide renown, was made 
one of the Lords of the Circumlocution 
Office ; and proclamation was issued, to 
all true believers, that this admirable 
appointment was to be hailed as a 
graceful and gracious mark of homage, 
rendered by the graceful and gracious 
Decimus to that commercial interest 
which must ever in a great commercial 
country — and all the rest of it, with 
blast of trumpet. So bolstered by this 
mark of government homage, the won- 
derful Bank and all the other wonderful 
undertakings went on and went up ; 
and gapers came to Harley Street, 
Cavendish Square, only to look at the 
house where the golden wonder lived. 

And when they saw the Chief Butler 
looking out at the hall door in his mo- 
ments of condescension, the gapers said 
how rich he looked, and wondered how 
much money he had in the wonderful 
Bank. But if they had known that 
respectable Nemesis better, they would 
not have wondered about it, and might 
have stated the amount with the utmost 
precision. 


CHAPTER XIII. 

THE PROGRESS OF AN EPIDEMIC. 

That it is at least as difficult to stay a 
moral infection as a physical one ; that 
such a disease will spread with the ma- 
lignity and rapidity of the Plague ; that 
the contagion, when it has once made 
head, will spare no pursuit or condition, 
but will lay hold on people in the sound- 
est health, and become developed in 
the most unlikely constitutions ; is a 
fact as firmly established by experience 
as that we human creatures breathe an 
atmosphere. A blessing beyond appre- 
ciation would be conferred upon man- 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


33i 


kind, if the tainted, in whose weakness 
or wickedness these virulent disorders 
are bred, could be instantly seized and 
placed in close confinement (not to say 
summarily smothered) before the poi- 
son is communicable. 

As a vast fire will fill the air to a 
great distance with its roar, so the sa- 
cred flame which the mighty Barnacles 
had fanned caused the air to resound 
more and more with the name of Mer- 
dle. It was deposited on every lip, and 
carried into every ear. There never 
was, there never had been, there never 
again should be, such a man as Mr. 
Merdle. Nobody, as aforesaid, knew 
what he had done ; but everybody knew 
him to be the greatest that had ap- 
peared. 

Down in Bleeding Heart Yard, where 
there was not one unappropriated half- 
penny, as lively an interest was taken 
in this paragon of men as on the Stock 
Exchange. Mrs. Plornish* now estab- 
lished in the small grocery and general 
trade in a snug little shop at the crack 
end of the Yardj at the top of the steps, 
with her little old father and Maggy 
acting as assistants, habitually held 
forth about him over the counter, in 
conversation with her customers. Mr. 
Plornish, who had a small share in a 
small builder’s business in the neighbor- 
hood, said, trowel in hand, on the tops 
of scaffolds and on the tiles of houses, 
that people did tell him as Mr. Merdle 
was the one, mind you to put us all to 
rights in respects of that which all on us 
looked to, and to bring us all safe home 
so much w r e needed, mind you, fur toe 
be brought. Mr. Baptist, sole lodger of 
Mr. and Mrs. Plornish, was reputed in 
whispers to lay by the savings which 
w T ere the result of his simple and mod- 
erate life for investment in one of Mr. 
Merdle’s certain enterprises. The fe- 
male Bleeding Hearts, when they came 
for ounces of tea and hundredweights 
of talk, gave Mrs. Plornish to under- 
stand, That how, ma’am, they had 
heard from their cousin Mary Anne, 
which worked in the line, that his lady’s 
dresses would fill three wagons. That 
how she was as handsome a lady, 
ma’am, as lived, no matter wheres, and 
a busk like marble itself. That how, 


J according to what they was told, ma’am, 
it was her son by a former husband as 
was took into the Government; and a 
General he had been, and armies he 
had marched again and victory crowned, 
if all you heard was to be believed. 
That how it was reported that Mr. Mer- 
dle’s words had been, that if they could 
have made it worth his while to take 
the whole government he would have 
took it without a profit, but that take 
it he could not and stand a loss. That 
how it was not to be expected, ma’am, 
that he should lose by it, his ways bas- 
ing, as you might say and utter no 
falsehood, paved with gold ; but that 
how it was much to be regretted that 
something handsome hadn’t been got 
up to make it worth his while ; for it 
was such and only such that knowed 
the h eighth to which the bread and 
butcher’s meat had rose, and it was 
such and only such that both could and 
would bring that heighth down. 

So rife and potent was the fever in 
Bleeding Heart Yard, that Mr. Pancks’s 
rent-days caused no interval in the pa- 
tients. The disease took the singular 
form, on those occasions, of causing the 
infected to find an unfathomable ex- 
cuse and consolation in allusions to the 
magic name. ' 

“ Now, then ! ” Mr. Pancks would 
say, to a defaulting lodger, “ pay up ! 
Come on ! ” 

“I haven’t got it, Mr. Pancks,” 
defaulter would reply. “ I tell you the 
truth, sir, when I say I have n’t got so 
much as a single sixpence of it to bless 
myself with.” 

“This won’t do, you know,” Mr. 
Pancks would retort. “ You don’t ex- 
pect it will do ; do you ? ” 

Defaulter would admit, with a low- 
spirited “ No, sir,” having no such ex- 
pectation. 

“ My proprietor is n’t going to stand 
this, you know,” Mr. Pancks would 
proceed. “ He don’t send me here for 
this. Pay up ! Come ! ” 

The Defaulter would make answer, 
“Ah, Mr. Pancks. If I was the rich 
gentleman whose name is in everybody’s 
mouth, — if my name was Merdle, sir, 
— I ’d soon pay up, and be glad to do 
it.” 


332 


LITTLE DORRIT, 


Dialogues on the rent question usu- 
ally took place at the house doors or in 
the entries, and in the presence of sev- 
eral deeply interested Bleeding Hearts. 
They always received a reference of this 
kind with a low murmur of response, as 
if it were convincing ; and the Default- 
er, however blank and discomfited be- 
fore, always cheered up a little in mak- 
ing it. 

“If I was Mr. Merdle, sir, you 
would n’t have cause to complain of me 
then. No, believe me ! ” the Defaulter 
would proceed with a shake of the 
head. “ I ’d pay up so quick then, Mr. 
Pancks, that you should n’t have to 
ask me.” 

The response would be heard again 
here, implying that it was impossible to 
say anything fairer, and that this was 
the next thing to paying the money 
down. 

Mr. Pancks would be now reduced to 
saying as he booked the case, “ Well ! 
You ’ll have the broker in, and be turned 
out ; that ’s what ’ll happen to you. 
It ’s no use talking to me about Mr. 
Merdle. You are not Mr. Merdle, any 
more than I am.” 

“No, sir,” the Defaulter would re- 
ply. “ I only wish you were him, 
sir.” 

The response would take this up 
quickly, replying with great feeling, 
“Only wish you were him, sir.” 

“ You ’d be easier with us if you were 
Mr. Merdle, sir,” the Defaulter would 
go on, with rising spirits, “ and it would 
be better for all parties. Better for our 
sakes, and better for yours, too. You 
wouldn’t have to worry no one then, 
sir. You would n’t have to worry us, 
and you would n’t have to worry your- 
self. You ’d be easier in your own 
mind, sir, and you ’d leave others easier, 
too, you would, if you were Mr. Mer- 
dle.” 

Mr. Pancks, in whom these imper- 
sonal compliments produced an irresist- 
ible sheepishness, never rallied after 
such a charge. He could only bite his 
nails and puff away to the next Default- 
er. The responsive Bleeding Hearts 
would then gather round the Defaulter 
whom he had just abandoned, apd the 
most extravagant rumors would circulate 


among them, to their great comfort, 
touching the amount of Mr. Merdle’s 
ready money. 

From one of the many such defeats of 
one of many rent-days, Mr. Pancks, 
having finished his day’s collection, re- 
paired, with his note-book under his 
arm, to Mrs. Plornish’s corner. Mr. 
Pancks’s object was not professional, 
but social. He had had a trying day, 
and wanted a little brightening. By 
this time he was on friendly terms with 
the Plomish family, having often looked 
in upon them, at similar seasons, and 
borne his part in recollections of Miss 
Dorrit. 

Mrs. Plornish’s shop-parlor had been 
decorated under her own eye, and pre- 
sented, on the side towards the shop, 
a little fiction in which Mrs. Plomish 
unspeakably rejoiced. This poetical 
heightening of the parlor consisted in 
the wall being painted to represent the 
exterior of a thatched cottage ; the ar- 
tist having introduced (in as effective a 
manner as he found compatible with 
their highly disproportionate dimen- 
sions) the real door and window. The 
modest sunflower and hollyhock w'ere 
depicted as flourishing with great luxu- 
riance on this rustic dwelling, w r hile a 
quantity of dense smoke issuing from 
the chimney indicated good cheer with- 
in, and also, perhaps, that it had not 
been lately swept. A faithful dog w^as 
represented as flying at the legs of the 
friendly visitor from the threshold ; and 
a circular pigeon-house, enveloped in a 
cloud of pigeons, arose from behind the 
garden-paling. On the door (when it 
was shut) appeared the semblance of a 
brass plate, presenting the inscription, 
Happy Cottage, T. and M. Plomish ; 
the partnership expressing man and 
wife. No Poetry and no Art ever 
charmed the imagination more than the 
union of the tw'o in this counterfeit cot- 
tage charmed Mrs. Plomish. It was 
nothing to her that Plornish had a hab- 
it of leaning against it as he smoked his 
pipe after w'ork, when his hat blotted 
out the pigeon-house and all the pig- 
eons, when his back swallowed up the * 
dwelling, w'hen his hands in his pockets 
uprooted the blooming garden and laid 
waste the adjacent country. To Mrs. 


MR. AND MRS. PLORNISH AND JOHN EDWARD NANDY. 






































































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LITTLE DORRIT. 


333 


Plomish, it was still a most beautiful 
cottage, a most wonderful deception ; 
and it made no difference that Mr. 
Plornish’s eye was some inches above 
the level of the gable bedroom in the 
thatch. To come out into the shop af- 
ter it was shut, and hear her father sing 
a song inside this cottage, was a perfect 
Pastoral to Mrs. Plornish, the Golden 
Age revived. And truly if that famous 
period had been revived, or had ever 
been at all, it may be doubted whether 
it would have produced many more 
heartily admiring daughters than the 
poor woman. 

Warned of a visitor by the tinkling 
bell at the shop door, Mrs. Plomish 
came out of Happy Cottage to see who 
it might be. “ I guessed it was you, 
Mr. Pancks,” said she “for it’s quite 
your regular night; ain’t it? Here’s 
father, you see, come out to serve at the 
sound of the bell, like a brisk young 
shopman. Ain’t he looking well? 
Father’s more pleased to see you than 
if you was a customer, for he dearly 
loves a gossip ; and when it turns upon 
Miss Dorrit, he loves it all the more. 
Y ou never heard father in such voice as 
he is in at present,” said Mrs. Plornish, 
her own voice quavering, she was so 
proud and pleased. “ He gave us 
Strephon last night, to that degree that 
Plornish gets up and makes him this 
speech across the table. ‘ John Edward 
Nandy,’ says Plornish to father, ‘ I 
Beyer heard you come the warbles as I 
have heard you come the warbles this 
night.’ Ain’t it gratifying, Mr. Pancks, 
though, really ? ” 

Mr. Pancks, who had snorted at the 
old man in his friendliest manner, re- 
plied in the affirmative, and casually 
asked whether that lively Altro chap 
had come in yet? Mrs. Plomish an- 
swered no, not yet, though he had gone 
to the West End with some work, and 
had said he should be back by teatime. 
Mr. Pancks was then hospitably pressed 
into Happy Cottage, where he encoun- 
tered the elder Master Plomish just 
come home from school. Examining 
that young student, lightly, on the edu- 
cational proceedings of the day, he 
found that the more advanced pupils 
who were in large text and the letter M, 


had been set the copy, “ Merdle, Mil- 
lions.” 

“ And how are you getting on, Mrs. 
Plomish,” said Pancks, “since we’re 
mentioning millions?” 

“Very steady indeed, sir,” returned 
Mrs. Plornish. “ Father, dear, would 
you go into the shop and tidy the win- 
dow a little bit before tea, your taste 
being so beautiful?” 

John Edward Nandy trotted away, 
much gratified, to comply with his 
daughter’s request. Mre. Plornish, 
who was always in mortal terror of men- 
tioning pecuniary affairs before the old 
gentleman, lest any disclosure she made 
might rouse his spirit and induce him 
to run away to the w'orkhouse, was thus 
left free to be confidential with Mr. 
Pancks. 

“ It ’s quite true that the business is 
very steady indeed,” said Mrs. Plor- 
nish, lowering her voice ; “ and has a 
excellent connection. The only thing 
that stands in its way,' sir, is the 
Credit.” 

This drawback, rather severely felt 
by most people who engaged in com- 
mercial transactions with the inhabitants 
of Bleeding Heart Yard, was a large 
stumbling-block in Mrs, Plornish’s 
trade. When Mr. Dorrit had estab- 
lished her in the business, the Bleeding 
Hearts had shown an amount of emo- 
tion and a determination to support her 
in it, that did honor to human nature. 
Recognizing her claim upon their gen- 
erous feelings as one who had long been 
a member of their community, they 
pledged themselves, with great feeling, 
to deal with Mrs. Plomish, come what 
would, and bestow their patronage on 
no other establishment. Influenced by 
these noble sentiments, they had even 
gone out of their way to purchase little 
luxuries in the grocery and butter line 
to which they were unaccustomed ; 
saying to one another, that if they did 
stretch a point, was it not for a neighbor 
and a friend, and for whom ought a 
point to be stretched if not for such ? 
So stimulated, the business was ex- 
tremely brisk, and the articles in stock 
went off with the greatest celerity. In 
short, if the Bleeding Hearts had but 
paid, the undertaking would have been 


334 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


a complete success ; whereas, by reason 
of their exclusively confining them- 
selves to owing, the profits actually 
realized had not yet begun to appear in 
the books. 

Mr. Pancks was making a very porcu- 
pine of himself by sticking his hair up, 
in the contemplation of this state of 
accounts, when old Mr. Nandy, re- 
entering the cottage with an air of 
mystery, entreated them to come and 
look at the strange behavior of Mr. 
Baptist, who seemed to have met with 
something that had scared him. All 
three going into the shop, and watching 
through the window, then saw Mr. 
Baptist, pale and agitated, go through 
the following extraordinary performan- 
ces. First, he was observed hiding at 
the top of the steps leading down into 
the Yard, and peeping up and down the 
street, with his head cautiously thrust 
out close to the side of the shop door. 
After very anxious scrutiny, he came 
out of liis retreat, and went briskly down 
the street as if he were going away al- 
together; then suddenly turned about, 
and went, at the same pace and with 
the same feint, up the street. He had 
gone no further up the street than he 
had gone down, when he crossed the 
road and disappeared. The object of 
this last. manoeuvre was only apparent, 
when his entering the shop with a sud- 
den twist, from the steps again, ex- 
plained that he had made a wide and 
obscure circuit round to the other, or 
Doyce and Clennam, end of the Yard, 
and had come through the Yard, and 
bolted in. He was out of breath by 
that time, as he might well be ; and his 
heart seemed to jerk faster than the 
little shop-bell, as it quivered and jin- 
gled behind him with his hasty shutting 
of the door. 

“ Hallo, old chap ! ” said Mr. Pancks. 
“Altro, old boy! What’s the mat- 
ter?” 

Mr. Baptist, or Signor Cavalletto, 
understood English now almost as well 
as Mr. Pancks himself, and could speak 
it very well too. Nevertheless, Mrs. 
Plornish, with a pardonable vanity in 
that accomplishment of hers which 
made her all but Italian, stepped in as 
interpreter. 


“E ask know,” said Mrs. Plornish,. 
“ what go wrong ? ” 

“ Come into the happy little cottage, 
Padrona,” returned Mr. Baptist, im- 
parting great stealthiness to his flurried 
back-handed shake of his right fore- 
finger. “ Come there ! ” 

Mrs. Plornish was proud of the title 
Padrona, which she regarded as signi- 
fying, not so much Mistress of the 
house, as Mistress of the Italian tongue. 
She immediately complied with Mr. 
Baptist’s request, and they all went 
into the cottage. 

“ E ope you no fright,” said Mrs. 
Plornish then, interpreting Mr. Pancks 
in a new way, with her usual fertility of 
resource. “What appen? Peaka Pa- 
drona ! ” 

“ I have seen some one,” returned 
Baptist. “ I have rincontrato him.” 

“Im? Oo him?” asked Mrs. Plor- 
nish. 

“ A bad man. A baddest man. I 
have hoped that I should never see 
him again.” 

“ Ow you know him bad?” asked 
Mrs. Plornish. 

“It does not matter, Padrona. I 
know it too well.” 

“E see you?” asked Mrs. Plor- 
nish. 

“No. I hope not. I believe not.” 

“He says,” Mrs. Plornish then in- 
terpreted, addressing her father and 
Pancks with mild condescension, “ that 
he has met a bad man, but he hopes 
the bad man didn’t see him. — Why,” 
inquired Mrs. Plornish, reverting to 
the Italian language, “ why ope bad 
man no see?” 

“ Padrona, dearest,” returned the 
little foreigner whom she so consider- 
ately protected, “ do not ask, I pray. 
Once again, I say it matters not. I 
have fear of this man. I do not wash 
to see him, I do not wash to be knowm 
of him — never again! Enough, most 
beautiful. Leave it ! ” 

The topic was so disagreeable to him, 
and so put his usual liveliness to the 
rout, that Mrs. Plornish forbore to 
press him further ; the rather as the 
tea had been drawing for some time on 
the hob. But she was not the less sur- 
prised and curious for asking no more 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


335 


. questions ; neither was Mr. Pancks, 
whose expressive breathing had been 
laboring hard, since the entrance of the 
little man, like a locomotive engine 
with a great load getting up a steep 
incline. Maggy, now better dressed 
than of yore, though still faithful to the 
monstrous character of her cap, had 
been in the background from the first 
with open mouth and eyes, which star- 
ing and gaping features were not dimin- 
ished in breadth by the untimely sup- 
pression of the subject. However, no 
more was said about it, though much 
appeared to be thought on all sides : 
by no means excepting the two young 
Plomishes, who partook of the evening 
meal as if their eating the bread and 
butter were rendered almost superfluous 
by the painful probability of the worst 
of men shortly presenting himself for 
the purpose of eating them. Mr. Bap- 
tist, by degrees, began to chirp a little ; 
but never stirred from the seat he had 
taken behind the door and close to the 
window, though it was not his usual 
place. As often as the little bell rang, 
he started and peeped out secretly, with 
the end of the little curtain in his hand, 
and the rest before his face ; evidently 
not at all satisfied but that the man 
he dreaded had tracked him through all 
his doublings and turnings, with the 
certainty of a terrible bloodhound. 

The entrance, at various times, of 
two or three customers, and - of Mr. 
Plomish, gave Mr. Baptist just enough 
of this employment to keep the atten- 
tion of the company fixed upon him. 
Tea was over, and the children were 
abed, and Mrs. Plomish was feeling 
her way to the dutiful proposal that 
her father should favor them with 
Chloe, when the bell again rang, and 
Mr. Clennam came in. 

Clennam had been poring late over 
his books and letters ; for the waiting- 
rooms of the Circumlocution Office rav- 
aged his time sorely. Over and above 
that, he was depressed and made un- 
easy by the late occurrence at his 
mother’s. He looked worn and soli- 
tary. He felt so, too ; but, neverthe- 
less, was returning home from his 
counting-house by that end of the yard, 
to give them the intelligence that he 


had received another letter from Miss 
Dorrit. 

The news made a sensation in the cot- 
tage which drew off the general atten- 
tion from Mr. Baptist. Maggy, who 
pushed her way into the foreground 
immediately, would have seemed to 
draw in the tidings of her little moth- 
er equally at her ears, nose, mouth, 
and eyes, but that the last were ob- 
structed by tears. She was particular- 
ly delighted when Clennam assured 
her that there were hospitals, and very 
kindly conducted hospitals, in Rome. 
Mr. Pancks rose into new distinction 
in virtue of being specially remem- 
bered in the letter. Everybody was 
pleased and interested, and Clennam 
was well repaid for his trouble. 

“ But you are tired, sir. Let me make 
you a cup of tea,” said Mrs. Plornish, 
“ if you ’d condescend to take such a 
thing in the cottage ; and many thanks 
to you, too, I am sure, for bearing us in 
mind so kindly.” 

Mr. Plomish, deeming it incumbent 
on him, as host, to add his personal ac- 
knowledgments, tendered them in the 
form which always expressed his high- 
est ideal of a combination of ceremo- 
ny with sincerity. 

“John Edward Nandy,” said Mr. 
Plornish, addressing the old gentle- 
man. “ Sir. It ’s not too often that 
you see unpretending actions without 
a spark of pride, and therefore when 
you see them give grateful honor unto 
the same, being that if you don’t and 
live to want ’em it follows serve you 
right.” 

To which Mr. Nandy replied : — 

“I am heartily of your opinion, 
Thomas, and which your opinion is 
the same as mine, and therefore no 
more words and not being backwards 
with that opinion, which opinion giv- 
ing it as yes, Thomas, yes, is the opin- 
ion in which yourself and me must 
ever be unanimously jined by all, and 
where there is not difference of opjn- 
ion there can be none but one opin- 
ion, which fully no, Thomas, Thomas, 
no ! ” 

Arthur, with less formality, expressed 
himself gratified by their high apprecia- 
tion of so very slight an attention on his 


33 ^ 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


part ; and explained as to the tea that 
he had not yet dined, and . was going 
straight home to refresh after a long 
day’s labor, or he would have readily 
accepted the hospitable offer. As Mr. 
Pancks was somewhat noisily getting 
his steam up for departure, he con- 
cluded by asking that gentleman if he 
would walk with him. Mr. Pancks 
said he desired no better engagement, 
and the two took leave of Happy Cot- 
tage. . 

“ If you will come home with me, 
Pancks,” said Arthur, when they got 
into the street, “and will share what 
dinner or supper there is, it will be 
next door to an act of charity ; for I 
am weary and out of sorts to-night.” 

“ Ask me to do a greater thing than 
that,” said Pancks, “ when you want it 
done, and I ’ll do it.” 

Between this eccentric personage and 
Clennam, a tacit understanding and ac- 
cord had been always improving since 
Mr. Pancks flew over Mr. Rugg’s back 
in the Marshalsea yard. When the car- 
riage drove away on the memorable day 
of the family’s departure, these two had 
looked after it together, and had w r alked 
slowly away together. When the .first 
letter came from Little Dorrit, nobody 
was more interested in hearing of her 
than Mr. Pancks. The second letter, at 
that moment in Clennam’s breast-pock- 
et, particularly remembered him by 
name. Though he had never before 
made any profession or protestation 
to Clennam, and though what he had 
just said was little enough as to the 
words in which it was expressed, Clen- 
nam had long had a growing belief that 
Mr. Pancks, in his own odd way, was 
becoming attached to him. All these 
strings intertwining made Pancks a very 
cable of anchorage that night. 

“ I am quite alone,” Arthur explained 
as they walked on. ** My partner is 
away, busily engaged at a distance on 
his branch of our business, and you shall 
do just as you like.” 

“ Thank you. You didn’t take par- 
ticular notice of little Altro just now; 
did you ? ” said Pancks. 

“No. Why?” 

“He’s a bright fellow, and I like 
him,” said Pancks. “Something has 


gone amiss with him to-day. Have 
ou any idea of any cause that can 
ave overset him ? ” 

“You surprise me! None whatev- 
er.” 

Mr. Pancks gave his reasons for the 
inquiry. Arthur was quite unprepared 
for them, and quite unable to suggest 
an explanation of them. 

“Perhaps you’ll ask him,” said 
Pancks, “as he’s a stranger?” 

“ Ask him what ? ” returned Clennam. 

“ What he has on his mind.” 

“ I ought first to see for myself that he 
has something on his mind, I think,” 
said Clennam. “ I have found him in 
every way so diligent, so grateful (for 
little enough), and so trustworthy, that 
it might look like suspecting him. And 
that would be very unjust.” 

“ True,” said Pancks. “ But I say ! 
You ought n’t to be anybody’s proprie- 
tor, Mr. Clennam. You’re much too 
delicate.” 

“ For the matter of that,” returned 
Clennam laughing, “ I have not a large 
proprietary share in Cavalletto. His 
carving is his livelihood. He keeps the 
keys of the factory, watches it every 
alternate night, and acts as a sort of 
housekeeper to it generally ; but we 
have little work in the way of his in- 
genuity, though we give him what we 
have. No ! I am rather his adviser 
than his proprietor. To call me his 
standing counsel and his banker would 
be nearer the fact. Speaking of being 
his banker, is it not curious, Pancks, 
that the ventures which run just now in 
so many people’s heads should run 
even in little Cavalletto’s ? ” 

“Ventures?” retorted Pancks, with 
a snort. “What ventures?” 

“ These Merdle enterprises.” 

“Oh! Investments,” said Pancks. 
“ Ay, ay ! I did n’t know you were 
speaking of investments.” 

His quick way of replying caused 
Clennam to look at him, with a doubt 
whether he meant more than he said. 
As it was accompanied, however, with 
a quickening of his pace and a corre- 
sponding increase in the laboring of his 
machinery, Arthur did not pursue the 
matter, and they soon arrived at his 
house. 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


337 


A dinner of soup and a pigeon-pie, 
served on a little round table before the 
fire, and flavored with a bottle of good 
wine, oiled Mr. Pancks’s works in a 
highly effective manner. So that when 
Clennam produced his Eastern pipe, 
and handed Mr. Pancks another Eastern 
pipe, the latter gentleman was perfectly 
comfortable. 

They puffed for a while in silence, 
Mr. Pancks like a steam-vessel with 
wind, tide, calm water, and all other 
sea - going conditions, in her favor. 
He was the first to speak, and he spoke 
thus, — 

“Yes. Investments is the word.” 

Clennam, with his former look, said,' 
“Ah!” 

“ I am going back to it, you see,” 
said Pancks. 

“Yes. I see you are going back to 
it,” returned Clennam, wondering why. 

“ Wasn’t it a curious thing that they 
should run in little Altro’s head ? Eh?” 
said Pancks, as he smoked. “Wasn’t 
that how you put it ? ” 

“ That was what I said.” 

“ Ay ! But think of the whole Yard 
having got it. Think of their all meet- 
ing me with it, on my collecting days, 
here and there and everywhere. Wheth- 
er they pay, or whether they don’t pay. 
Merdle, Merdle, Merdle. Always Mer- 
dle.” 

“ Very strange how these runs on an 
infatuation prevail,” said Arthur. 

“ Ain’t it ? ” returned Pancks. After 
smoking for a minute or so, more dryly 
than comported with his recent oiling, 
he added : “ Because you see these 
people don’t understand the subject.” 

“ Not a bit,” assented Clennam. 

“ Not a bit,” cried Pancks. “ Know 
nothing of figures. Know nothing of 
money questions. Never made a cal- 
culation. Never worked it, sir!” 

“ If they had — ” Clennam was going 
on to say ; when Mr. Pancks, without 
change of countenance, produced a sound 
so far surpassing all his usual efforts, 
nasal or bronchial, that he stopped. 

“ If they had?” repeated Pancks in 
an inquiring tone. 

“I thought you — spoke,” said Ar- 
thur, hesitating what name to give the 
interruption. 


“ Not at all,” said Pancks. “ Not 
yet. I may in a minute. If they 
had ? ” 

“ If they had,” observed Clennam, 
who was a little at a loss how to take 
his friend, “ why, I suppose they would 
have known better.” 

“ How so, Mr. Clennam?” Pancks 
asked, quickly, and with an odd effect 
of having been from the commencement 
of the conversation loaded with the 
heavy charge he now fired off. “They 
’re right, you know. They don’t mean 
to be, but they ’re right.” 

“ Right in sharing Cavalletto’s in- 
clination to speculate with Mr. Mer- 
dle?” 

“ Per-fectly, sir,” said Pancks. “I 
’ve gone into it. I ’ve made the cal- 
culations. I ’ve worked it. They ’re 
safe and genuine.” Relieved by having 
got to this, Mr. Pancks took as long a 
pull as his lungs would permit at his 
Eastern pipe, and looked sagaciously 
and steadily at Clennam while inhaling 
and exhaling too. 

In those moments, Mr. Pancks began 
to give out the dangerous infection with 
which he was laden. It is the manner 
of communicating these diseases ; it is 
the subtle way in which they go about. 

“Do you mean, my good Pancks,” 
asked Clennam, emphatically, “ that 
you would put that thousand pounds of 
yours, let us say, for instance, out at 
this kind of interest ? ” 

“ Certainly*” said Pancks. “Al- 
ready done it, sir.” 

Mr. Pancks took another long inha- 
lation, another long exhalation, another 
long sagacious look at Clennam. 

“ I tell you, Mr. Clennam, I ’ve gone 
into it,” said Pancks. “ He ’s a man 
of immense resources — enormous capi- 
tal — government influence. They’re 
the best schemes afloat. They’re 
safe. They’re certain.” 

“ Well ! ” returned Clennam, looking 
first at him gravely, and then at the fire 
gravely. “ You surprise me ! ” 

“ Bah ! ” Pancks retorted. “ Don’t 
say that, sir. It’s what you ought to 
do yourself. Why don’t you do as I 
do? ” 

Of whom Mr. Pancks had taken the 
prevalent disease, he could no more 


22 


338 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


have told than if he had unconsciously 
taken a fever. Bred at first, as many 
physical diseases are, in the wickedness 
of men, and then disseminated in their 
ignorance, these epidemics, after a pe- 
riod, get communicated to many suffer- 
ers who are neither ignorant nor wick- 
ed. Mr. Pancks might, or might not, 
have caught the illness himself from a 
subject of this class j’^Dut in this cate- 
gory he appeared before Clennam, and 
the infection he threw off was all the 
more virulent. 

“ And you have really invested,” 
Clennam had already passed to that 
word, “your thousand pounds, Pancks?” 

“To be sure, sir ! ” replied Pancks, 
boldly, with a puff of smoke. “ And 
only wish it ten ! ” 

Now Clennam had two subjects ly- 
ing heavy on his lonely mind that 
night; the one, his partner’s long-de- 
ferred hope ; the other, what he had 
seen and heard at his mother’s. In the 
relief of having this companion, and 
of feeling that he could trust him, he 
passed on to both, and both brought 
him round again, with an increase and 
acceleration of force, to his point of de- 
parture. 

It came about in the simplest man- 
ner. Quitting the investment subject, 
after an interval of silent looking at the 
fire through the smoke of his pipe, he 
told Panfcks how and why he was occu- 
pied with the great national Depart- 
ment. “A hard case it has been, and a 
hard case it is, on Doyce,” he finished 
• by saying, with all the honest feeling 
the topic roused in him. 

“ Hard indeed,” Pancks acquiesced. 
“ But you manage for him, Mr. Clen- 
nam ? ” 

“ How do you mean? ” 

“ Manage the money part of the busi- 
ness ? ” 

“Yes. As well as I can.” 

“ Manage it better, sir,” said Pancks. 
“Recompense him for his toils and dis- 
appointments. Give him the chances 
of the time. He ’ll never benefit him- 
self in that way, patient and preoccu- 
pied workman. He looks to you, sir.” 

“I do my best, Pancks,” returned 
Clennam, uneasily. “ As to duly weigh- 
ing and considering these new enter- 


prises, of which I have had no experi- 
ence, I doubt if I am fit for it. I am 
growing old.” 

“Growing old?” cried Pancks. 

“ Ha, ha ! ” 

There was something so indubitably 
genuine in the wonderful laugh, and 
series of snorts and puffs, engendered 
in Mr. Pancks’s astonishment at, and 
utter rejection of, the idea, that his be- 
ing quite in earnest could not be ques- 
tioned. 

“Growing old?” cried Pancks. 
“ Hear, hear, hear ! Old? Hear him, 
hear him ! ” 

The positive refusal expressed in Mr. 
Pancks’s continued snorts, no less than 
in these exclamations, to entertain the 
sentiment for a single instant, drove 
Arthur away from it. Indeed, he was 
fearful of something happening to Mr. 
Pancks in the violent conflict that took 
place between the breath he jerked out 
of himself and the smoke he jerked into 
himself. This abandonment of the sec- 
ond topic threw him on the third. 

“Young, old, or middle-aged, 
Pancks,” he said, when there was a 
favorable pause, “ I am in a very anx- 
ious and uncertain state, — a state that 
even leads me to doubt whether any- 
thing now seeming to belong to me 
may be really mine. Shall I tell you 
how this is ? Shall I put a great trust 
in you ? ” 

“You shall, sir,” said Pancks, “if 
you believe me worthy of it.” 

“I do.” 

“ You may ! ” Mr. Pancks’s short 
and sharp rejoinder, confirmed by the 
sudden outstretching of his coaly hand, 
was most expressive and convincing. 
Arthur shook the hand warmly. 

He then, softening the nature of his 
old apprehensions as much as was pos- 
sible consistently with their being made 
intelligible, and never alluding to. his 
mother by name, but speaking vaguely 
of a relation of his, confided to Mr. 
Pancks a broad outline of the misgiv- 
ings he entertained, and of the inter- 
view he had witnessed. Mr. Pancks 
listened with such interest that, regard- 
less of the charms of the Eastern pipe, 
he put it in the grate among the fire- 
irons, and occupied his hands during 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


339 


the whole recital in so erecting the loops 
and hooks of hair all over his head, that 
he looked, when it came to a conclusion, 
like a journeyman Hamlet in conversa- 
tion with his father’s spirit. 

“Brings me back, sir,” was his ex- 
clamation then, with a startling touch 
on Clennam’s knee, — “ brings me back, 
sir, to the Investments ! I don’t say 
anything of your making yourself poor 
to repair a wrong you never committed. 
That ’s you. A man must be himself. 
But I say this. Fearing you may want 
money to save your own blood from 
exposure and disgrace, — make as much 
as you can ! ” 

Arthur shook his head, but looked at 
him thoughtfully too. 

“ Be as rich as you can, sir,” Pancks 
adjured him with a powerful concentra- 
tion of all his energies on the advice. 
“ Be as rich as you honestly can. It’s 
your duty. Not for your sake, but for 
the sake of others. Take time by the 
forelock. Poor Mr. Doyce (who really 
is growing old) depends upon you. Your 
relative depends upon you. You don’t 
know what depends upon you.” 

“Well, well, well!” returned Ar- 
thur. “Enough for to-night.” 

“ One word more, Mr. Clennam,” 
retorted Pancks, “ and then enough for 
to-night. Why should you leave all the 
gains to the gluttons, knaves, and im- 
postors ? Why should you leave all the 
gains that are to be got to my proprie- 
tor and the like of him? Yet you’re 
always doing it. When I say you, I 
mean such men as you. You know you 
are. Why, I see it every day of my 
life. I see nothing else. It ’s my busi- 
ness to see it. Therefore I say,” urged 
Pancks, “ Go in and win ! ” 

“But what of Go in and lose ? ” said 
Arthur. 

“Can’t be done, sir,” returned Pancks. 
“ I have looked into it. Name up, ev- 
erywhere — immense resources — enor- 
mous capital — great position — high con- 
nection — government influence. Can’t 
be done ! ” 

Gradually, after this closing exposi- 
tion, Mr. Pancks subsided ; allowed his 
hair to droop as much as it ever would 
droop on the utmost persuasion ; re- 
claimed the pipe from the fire-irons, 


filled it anew, and smoked it out. They 
said little more ; but were company to 
one another in silently pursuing the 
same subjects, and did not part until 
midnight. On taking his leave, Mr. 
Pancks, when he had shaken hands 
with Clennam, worked completely round 
him before he steamed out at the door. 
This Arthur received as an assurance 
that he might implicitly rely on Pancks, 
if he should ever come to need assist- 
ance ; either in any of the matters of 
which they had spoken that night, or on 
any other subject that could in any way 
affect himself. 

At intervals all next day, and even 
while his attention was fixed on other 
things, he thought of Mr. Pancks’s in- 
vestment of his thousand pounds, and 
of his having “looked into it.” He 
thought of Mr. Pancks’s being so san- 
guine in this matter, and of his not be- 
ing usually of a sanguine character. He 
thought of the great National Depart- 
ment, and of the delight it would be to 
him to see Doyce better off. He thought 
of the darkly threatening place that 
went by the name of Home in his re- 
membrance, and of the gathering shad- 
ows which made it yet more darkly 
threatening than of old. He observed 
anew that wherever he went, he saw, 
or heard, or touched, the celebrated 
name of Merdle ; he found it difficult 
even to remain at his desk a couple of 
hours, without having it presented to 
one of his bodily senses through some 
agency or other. He began to think it 
was curious too that it should be every- 
where, and that nobody but he should 
seem to have any mistrust of it. Though 
indeed he began to remember, when 
he got to this, even he did not mis- 
trust it : he had only happened to keep 
aloof from it. 

Such symptoms, when a disease of 
the kind is rife, are usually the signs of 
sickening. 


CHAPTER XIV. 

TAKING ADVICE. 

When it became known to the Brit- 
ons on the shore of the yellow Tiber, 


34 ° 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


that their intelligent compatriot Mr. 
Sparkler was made one of the Lords of 
their Circumlocution Office, they took 
it as a piece of news with which they 
had no nearer concern than w'ith any 
other piece of news — any other Acci- 
dent or Offence — in the English pa- 
pers. Some laughed; some said, by 
way of complete excuse, that the post 
was virtually a sinecure, and any fool 
who could spell his name was good 
enough for it ; some, and these were 
the more solemn political oracles, said 
that Decimus did wisely to strengthen 
himself, and that the sole constitutional 
purpose of all places within the gift of 
Decimus was, that Decimus should 
strengthen himself. A few bilious Brit- 
ons there were who would not subscribe 
to this article of faith ; but their objec- 
tion was purely theoretical. In a prac- 
tical point of view, they listlessly aban- 
doned the matter, as being the business 
of some other Britons unknown, some- 
where, or nowhere. In like manner, at 
home, great numbers of Britons main- 
tained, for as long as four-and-twenty 
consecutive hours, that those invisible 
and anonymous Britons “ ought to take 
it up ” ; and that if they quietly acqui- 
esced in it, they deserved it. But of 
what class the remiss Britons were com- 
posed, and where the unlucky creatures 
hid themselves, and why they hid them- 
selves, and how it constantly happened 
that they neglected their interests, when 
so many other Britons were quite at a 
loss to account for their not looking af- 
ter those interests, was not, either upon 
the shore of the yellow Tiber or the 
shore of the black Thames, made ap- 
parent to men. 

Mrs. Merdle circulated the news, as 
she received congratulations on it, with 
a careless grace that displayed it to ad- 
vantage, as the setting displays the jew- 
el. Yes, she said, Edmund had taken 
the place. Mr. Merdle wished him to 
take it, and he had taken it. She hoped 
Edmund might like it, but really she 
did n’t know. It would keep him in 
town a good deal, and he preferred the 
country. Still, it was not a disagreeable 
position, — and it was a position. There 
was no denying that the thing was a 
compliment to Mr. Merdle, and was 


not a bad thing for Edmund if he liked 
it. It was just as well that he should 
have something to do, and it was just 
as well that he should have something 
for doing it. Whether it would be more 
agreeable to Edmund than the army, 
remained to be seen. 

Thus the bosom ; accomplished in 
the art of seeming to make things of 
small account, and really enhancing 
them in the process. While Henry 
Gowan, whom Decimus had thrown 
away, went through the whole round 
of his acquaintance between the Gate 
of the People and the town of Albano, 
vowing, almost (but not quite) with tears 
in his eyes, that Sparkler was the sweet- 
est - tempered, simplest - hearted, alto- 
gether most lovable jackass that ever 
grazed on the public common ; and that 
only one circumstance could have de- 
lighted him (Gowan) more, than his (the 
beloved jackass’s) getting this post, and 
that would have been his (Gowan’s) 
getting it himself. He said it was the 
very thing for Sparkler. There was 
nothing to do, and he would do it 
charmingly ; there was a handsome 
salary to draw, and he would draw it 
charmingly ; it was a delightful, appro- 
priate, capital appointment ; and he al- 
most forgave the donor his slight of 
himself, in his joy that the dear donkey 
for whom he had so great an affection 
was so admirably stabled. Nor did his 
benevolence stop here. He took pains, 
on all social occasions, to draw Mr. 
Sparkler out, and make him conspicu- 
ous before the company ; and, although 
the considerate action always resulted 
in that young gentleman’s making a 
dreary and forlorn mental spectacle of 
himself, the friendly intention was not 
to be doubted. 

Unless, indeed, it chanced to be 
doubted by the object of Mr. Sparkler’s 
affections. Miss Fanny was now in the 
difficult situation of being universally 
known in that light, and of not having 
dismissed Mr. Sparkler, however capri- 
ciously she used him. Hence, she was 
sufficiently identified with the gentleman 
to feel compromised by his being more 
than usually ridiculous ; and hence, be- 
ing by no means deficient in quickness, 
she sometimes came to his rescue 


LITTLE DORRIT, 


34i 


against Gowan, and did him very good 
service. But, while doing this, she was 
ashamed of him, undetermined whether 
to get rid of him or more decidedly en- 
courage him, distracted with apprehen- 
sions that she was every day becoming 
more and more immeshed in her uncer- 
tainties, and tortured by misgivings that 
Mrs. Merdle triumphed in her distress. 
With this tumult in her mind, it is no 
subject for surprise that Miss Fanny 
came home one night in a state of agi- 
tation from a concert and ball at Mrs. 
Merdle’s house, and, on her sister af- 
fectionately trying to soothe her, pushed 
that sister away from the toilet-table 
at which she sat angrily trying to cry, 
and declared with a heaving bosom that 
she detested everybody, and she wished 
she was dead. 

“Dear Fanny, what is the matter? 
Tell me.” 

“ Matter, you little Mole,” said Fan- 
ny. “ If you were not the blindest of 
the blind, you vrould have no occasion 
to ask me. The idea of daring to pre- 
tend to assert that you have eyes in 
your head, and yet ask me what ’s the 
matter ! ” 

“ Is it Mr. Sparkler, dear? ” 

“ Mis-ter Spar-kler ! ” repeated Fan- 
ny, with unbounded scorn, as if he were 
the last subject in the solar system that 
could possibly be near her mind. “No, 
Miss Bat, it is not.” 

Immediately afterwards, she became 
remorseful for having called her sister 
names ; declaring with sobs that she 
knew she made herself hateful, but that 
everybody drove her to it. 

“ I don’t think you are well to-night, 
dear Fanny.” 

“ Stuff and nonsense ! ” replied the 
young lady, turning angry again ; “ I 
am as well as you are. Perhaps I 
might say, better, and yet make no 
boast of it.” 

Poor Little Dorrit, not seeing her 
v 7 ay to the offering of any soothing 
words that would escape repudiation, 
deemed it best to remain quiet. At first, 
Fanny took this ill, too ; protesting to her 
looking-glass, that of all the trying sis- 
ters a girl could have, she did think the 
most trying sister was a flat sister. 
That she knew she was at times a 


wretched temper ; that she knew she 
made herself hateful; that when she 
made herself hateful, nothing would do 
her half the good of being told so ; but 
that, being afflicted with a flat sister, 
she never was told so, and the conse- 
quence resulted that she was absolutely 
tempted and goaded into making herself 
disagreeable. Besides (she angrily told 
her looking-glass), she did n’t want to be 
forgiven. It was not a right example, 
that she should constantly be stooping 
to be forgiven by a younger sister. And 
this was the Art of it, — that she was 
always being placed in the position of be- 
ing forgiven whether she liked it or not. 
Finally she burst into violent weeping, 
and, when her sister came and sat close 
at her side to comfort her, said, “Amy, 
you ’re an Angel ! ” 

“ But I tell you what, my Pet,” said 
Fanny, when her sister’s gentleness had 
calmed her, “ it now comes to this ; that 
things cannot and shall not go on as they 
are at present going on, and that there 
must be an end of this, one way or 
other.” 

As the announcement was vague, 
though very peremptory, Little Dorrit 
returned, “ Let us talk about it.” 

“Quite so, my dear,” assented Fanny, 
as she dried her eyes. “ Let us talk 
about it. I am rational again now, and 
you shall advise me. Will you advise 
me, my sweet child ? ” 

Even Amy smiled at the notion, but 
she said, “I will, Fanny, as well as I 
can.” 

“ Thank you, dearest Amy,” returned 
Fanny, kissing her. “ You are my An- 
chor.” 

Having embraced her Anchor with 
great affection, Fanny took a bottle of 
sweet toilet-water from the table, and 
called to her maid for a fine handker- 
chief. She then dismissed that attend- 
ant for the night, and went on to be ad- 
vised ; dabbing her eyes and forehead, 
from time to time, to cool them. 

“My love,” Fannybegan, “ourchar- 
acters and points of view are sufficiently 
different (kiss me again, my darling) 
to make it very probable that I shall 
surprise you by what I am going to say. 
What I am going to say, my dear, is that, 
notwithstanding our property, we la- 


342 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


bor, socially speaking, under disadvan- 
tages. You don’t quite understand 
what I mean, Amy ? ” 

“ I have no doubt I shall,” said 
Amy, mildly, “ after a few words 
more.” 

“ Well, my dear, what I mean is 
that we are, after all, new-comers into 
fashionable life.” 

“ I am sure, Fanny,” Little Dorrit in- 
terposed in her zealous admiration, “ no 
one need find that out in you.” 

“ Well, my dear child, perhaps not,” 
said Fanny, “though it ’s most kind 
and most affectionate in you, you pre- 
cious girl, to say so.” Here she dabbed 
her sister’s forehead, and blew upon it a 
little. “ But you are,” resumed Fanny, 
“as is well known, the dearest little 
thing that ever was ! To resume, my 
child. Pa is extremely gentlemanly and 
extremely well informed, but he is, in 
some trifling respects, a little different 
from other gentlemen of his fortune, — 
partly on account of what he has gone 
through, poor dear ; partly, I fancy, on 
account of its often running in his mind 
that other people are thinking about 
that, while he is talking to them. Un- 
cle, my love, is altogether unpresenta- 
ble. Though a dear creature to whom 
I am tenderly attached, he is, socially 
speaking, shocking. Edward is fright- 
fully expensive and dissipated. I don’t 
mean that there is anything ungenteel 
in that itself, — far from it, — but I do 
mean that he does n’t do it well, and that 
he does n’t, if I may so express myself, 
get the money’s worth in the sort of dis- 
sipated reputation that attaches to him.” 

“ Poor Edward ! ” sighed Little Dor- 
rit, with the whole family history in 
the sigh. 

“Yes. And poor you and me too,” 
returned Fanny, rather sharply. “ Very 
true ! Then, my dear, we have no 
mother, and we have a Mrs. General. 
And I tell you again, darling, that Mrs. 
General, if I may reverse a common 
proverb and adapt it to her, is a cat in 
gloves who will catch mice. That wo- 
man, I am quite sure and confident, 
will be our mother-in-law.” 

“I can hardly think, Fanny — ” 
Fanny stopped her. 

“ Now, don’t argue with me about it, 


Amy,” said she, “because I know bet- 
ter.” Feeling that she had been sharp 
again, she dabbed her sister’s forehead 
again, and blew upon it again. “To 
resume once more, my dear. It then 
becomes a question with me (I am 
proud and spirited, Amy, as you very 
well know : too much so, I dare say) 
whether I shall make up my mind to 
take it upon myself to carry the family 
through.” 

“ How? ” asked her sister, anxiously. 

“I will not,” said Fanny, without 
answering the question, “submit to be 
mother-in-lawed by Mrs. General ; and 
I will not submit to be, in any respect 
whatever, either patronized or torment- 
ed by Mrs. Merdle.” 

Little Dorrit laid her hand upon the 
hand that held the bottle of sweet 
water, with a still more anxious look. 
Fanny, quite punishing her own fore- 
head with the vehement dabs she now 
began to give it, fitfully went on. 

“ That he has, somehow or other, and 
how is of no consequence, attained a 
very good position, no one can deny. 
That it is a very good connection, no 
one can deny. And as to the question 
of clever or not clever, I doubt very 
much whether a clever husband would 
be suitable to me. I cannot submit. 
I should not be able to defer to him 
enough.” 

“ O my dear Fanny ! ” expostulated 
Little Dorrit, upon whom a kind of ter- 
ror had been stealing as she perceived 
what her sister meant. “ If you loved 
any one, all this feeling would change. 
If you loved any one, you would no 
more be yourself, but you would quite 
lose and forget yourself in your devo- 
tion to him. If you loved him, Fan- 
ny — ” Fanny had stopped the dabbing 
hand, and was looking at her fixedly. 

“ O, indeed ! ” cried Fanny. “Real- 
ly? Bless me, how much some people 
know of some subjects ! They say 
every one has a subject, and I certainly 
seem to have hit upon yours, Amy. 
There, you little thing, I was only in 
fun,” dabbing her sister’s forehead ; 
“ but don’t you be a silly puss, and 
don’t you think flightily and eloquent- 
ly about degenerate impossibilities. 
There ! Now, I ’ll go back to myself.” 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


343 


“Dear Fanny, let me say first, that I 
would far rather we worked for a scanty 
living again, than I would see you rich 
and married to Mr. Sparkler.” 

“ Let you say, my dear?” retorted 
Fanny. “ Why of course, I will let you 
say anything. There is no constraint 
upon you, I hope. We are together to 
talk it over. And as to marrying Mr. 
Sparkler, I have not the least intention 
of doing so to-night, my dear, or to- 
morrow morning, either.” 

“But at some time? ” 

“At no time, for anything I know at 
present,” answered Fanny, with indif- 
ference. Then, suddenly changing her 
indifference into a burning restlessness, 
she added, “ You talk about the clever 
men, you little thing ! It ’s all very fine 
and easy to talk about the clever men ; 
but where are they? 1 don’t see them 
anywhere near vie ! ” 

“ My dear Fanny, so short a time — ” 

“ Short time or long time,” interrupt- 
ed Fanny, “I am impatient of our 
situation, I don’t like our situation, and 
very little would induce me to change it. 
Other girls, differently reared and differ- 
ently circumstanced altogether, might 
wonder at what I say or may do. Let 
them. They are driven by their lives 
and characters ; I am driven by mine.” 

“Fanny, my dear F anny, you know that 
you have qualities to make you the wife 
of pne very superior to Mr. Sparkler.” 

“ Amy, my dear Amy,” retorted Fan- 
ny, parodying her words, “ I know that 
I wish to have a more defined and dis- 
tinct position, in which I can assert my- 
self with greater effect against that inso- 
lent woman.” 

“ Would you therefore — forgive my 
asking, Fanny — therefore marry her 
son ? ” 

“ Why, perhaps,” said Fanny, with a 
triumphant smile. “ There may be 
many less promising ways of arriving at 
an end than that, my dear. That piece 
of insolence may think, now, that it 
would be a great success to get her son 
off upon me, and shelve me. But per- 
haps she little thinks how I would retort 
upon her if I married her son. I would 
oppose her in everything, and compete 
with her. I would make it the business 
of my life.” 


Fanny set down the bottle when she 
came to this, and walked about the 
room ; always stopping and standing 
still while she spoke. 

“ One thing I could certainly do, my 
child : I could make her older. And I 
would ! ” 

This was followed by another walk. 

“ I would talk of her as an old woman. 
I would pretend to know — if I didn’t, 
but I should from her son — all about 
her age. And she should hear me say, 
Amy, — affectionately, quite dutifully and 
affectionately, — how well she looked, 
considering her time of life. I could 
make her seem older, at once, by being 
myself so much younger. I may not be 
as handsome as she is ; lam not a fair 
judge of that question, I suppose ; but 
I know I am handsome enough to be a 
thorn in her side. And I would be ! ” 

“ My dear sister, would you. condemn 
yourself to an unhappy life for this ? ” 

“It wouldn’t be an unhappy life, 
Amy. It would be the life I am fitted 
for. Whether by disposition, or wheth- 
er by circumstances, is no matter ; I 
am better fitted for such a life than for 
almost any other.” 

There was something of a desolate 
tone in those words ; but, with a short 
proud laugh, she took another walk, and 
after passing a great looking-glass came 
to another stop. 

“ Figure ! Figure, Amy ! Well. The 
woman has a good figure. I will give 
her her due, and not deny it. But is it 
so far beyond all others that it is al- 
together unapproachable? Upon my 
word, I am not so sure of it. Give 
some much younger women the latitude 
as to dress that she has, being married ; 
and we would see about that, my 
dear ! ” 

Something in the thought that was 
agreeable and flattering brought her 
back to her seat in a gayer temper. 
She took her sister’s hands in hers, and 
clapped all four hands above her head 
as she looked in her sister’s face laugh- 
ing : — 

“ And the dancer, Amy, that she has 
quite forgotten, — the dancer who bore 
no sort of resemblance to me, and of 
whom I never remind her, O dear no ! 
— should dance through her life, and 


344 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


dance in her way, to such a tune as 
would disturb her insolent placidity a 
little. Just a little, my dear Amy, just 
a little ! ” 

Meeting an earnest and imploring 
look in Amy’s face, she brought the four 
hands down, and laid only one on Amy’s 
lips. 

“Now, don’t argue with me, child,” 
she said in a sterner way, “ because it is 
of no use. I understand these subjects 
much better than you do. I have not 
nearly made up my mind, but it may be. 
Now we have talked this over comfort- 
ably, and may go to bed. You best 
and dearest little mouse, Good night ! ” 
With those words Fanny weighed her 
Anchor, and — having taken so much 
advice — left off being advised for that 
occasion. 

Thenceforward, Amy observed Mr. 
Sparkler’s treatment by his enslaver, 
with new reasons for attaching impor- 
tance to all that passed between them. 
There were times when F anny appeared 
quite unable to endure his mental fee- 
bleness, and when she became so sharp- 
ly impatient of it that she would all but 
dismiss him for good. There were 
other times when she got on much bet- 
ter with him ; when he amused her, and 
when her sense of superiority seemed to 
counterbalance that opposite side of the 
scale. If Mr. Sparkler had been other 
than the faithfullest and most submis- 
sive of swains, he was sufficiently hard 
pressed to have fled from the scene of 
his trials, and have set at least the 
whole distance from Rome to London 
between himself and his enchantress. 
But he had no greater will of his own 
than a boat has when it is towed by a 
steamship ; and he followed his cruel 
mistress through rough and smooth on 
equally strong compulsion. 

Mrs. Merdle, during these passages, 
said little to Fanny, but said more about 
her. She was, as it were, forced to 
look at her, through her eye-glass, and 
in general conversation to allow com- 
mendations of her beauty to be wrung 
from her by its irresistible demands. 
The defiant character it assumed when 
Fanny heard these extollings (as it gen- 
erally happened that she did), was not 
expressive of concessions to the impar- 


tial bosom ; but the utmost revenge 
the bosom took was, to say audibly, 
“a spoilt beauty, — but with that face 
and shape, who could wonder?” 

It might have been about a month or 
six weeks after the night of the advice, 
when Little Dorrit began to think she 
detected some new understanding be- 
tween Mr. Sparkler and Fanny. Mr. 
Sparkler, as if in adherence to some com- 
pact, scarcely ever spoke without first 
looking towards Fanny for leave. That 
young lady was too discreet ever to 
look back again ; but if Mr. Sparkler 
had permission to speak, she remained 
silent ; if he had not, she herself spoke. 
Moreover, it became plain whenever 
Henry Gowan attempted to perform the 
friendly office of drawing him out, that 
he was not to be drawn. And not only 
that, but Fanny would presently, with- 
out any pointed application in the world, 
chance to say something with such a 
sting in it, that Gowan w’ould draw’ back 
as if he had put his hand into a bee- 
hive. 

There was yet another circumstance 
which went a long w-ay to confirm Little 
Dorrit in her fears, though it was not a 
great circumstance in itself. Mr. Spark- 
ler’s demeanor towards herself changed. 
It became fraternal. Sometimes, when 
she was in the outer circle of assemblies, 
— at their own residence, at Mrs. Mer- 
dle’s, or elsewhere, — she would find 
herself stealthily supported round the 
waist by Mr. Sparkler’s arm. Mr. Spark- 
ler never offered the slightest explana- 
tion of this attention ; but merely smiled 
with an air of blundering, contented, 
good-natured proprietorship, _ which, in 
so heavy a gentleman, was ominously 
expressive. 

Little Dorrit w-as at home one day, 
thinking about Fanny with a heavy 
heart. They had a room at one end of 
their draw'ing-room suite, nearly all ir- 
regular bay-window, projecting over the 
street, and commanding all the pictu- 
resque life and variety of the Corso, both 
up and down. At three or four o’clock 
in the afternoon, English time, the view 
from this window was very bright and 
peculiar ; and Little Dorrit used to sit 
and muse here, much as she. had been 
used to while away the time in her bal- 


MRS. MERDLE, MR. SPARKLER, AND FANNY 





















































































































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% 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


345 


cony at Venice. Seated thus one day, 
she was softly touched on the shoulder, 
and Fanny said, “Well, Amy dear,” 
and took her seat at her side. Their 
seat was a part of the window ; when 
there was anything in the way of a pro- 
cession going on, they used to have 
bright draperies hung out at the win- 
dow, and used to kneel or sit on this 
seat and look out at it, leaning on the 
brilliant color. But there was no pro- 
cession that day, and Little Dorrit was 
rather surprised by Fanny’s being at 
home at that hour, as she was generally 
out on horseback then. 

“Well, Amy,” said Fanny, “what 
are you thinking of, little one?” 

“ I was thinking of you, Fanny.” 

“No? What a coincidence! I de- 
clare here ’s some one else. You were 
not thinking of this some one else too ; 
were you, Amy? ” 

Amy had been thinking of this some 
one else too ; for it was Mr. Sparkler. 
She did not say so, however, as she 
gave him her hand. Mr. Sparkler came 
and sat down on the other side of her, 
and she felt the fraternal railing come 
behind her, and apparently stretch on 
to include Fanny. 

“ Well, my little sister,” said Fanny, 
with a sigh, “ I suppose you know what 
this means ? ” 

“ She ’s as beautiful as she ’s doated 
on,” stammered Mr. Sparkler, — “and 
there ’s no nonsense about her, — it ’s 
arranged — ” 

“ You need n’t explain, Edmund,” 
said Fanny. 

“No, my love,” said Mr. Sparkler. 

“ In short, pet,” proceeded Fanny, 
“on the whole, we are engaged. We 
must tell papa about it, either to-night 
or to-morrow, according to the opportu- 
nities. Then it ’s done, and very little 
more need be said.” 

“My dear Fanny,” said Mr. Spark- 
ler, with deference, “ I should like to 
say a word to Amy.” 

“ Well, well ! Say it, for goodness’ 
sake,” returned the young lady. 

“I am convinced, my dear Amy,” 
said Mr. Sparkler, “ that if ever there 
was a girl, next to your highly endowed 
and beautiful sister, who had no non- 
sense about her — ” 


“ We know all about that, Edmund,” 
interposed Miss Fanny. “ Never mind 
that. Pray go on to something else be- 
sides our having no nonsense about us.” 

“Yes, my love,” said Mr. Sparkler. 
“ And I assure you, Amy, that nothing 
can be a greater happiness to myself, 
myself, — next to the happiness of be- 
ing so highly honored with the choice 
of a glorious girl who hasn’t an atom 
of—” 

“ Pray, Edmund, pray ! ” interrupted 
Fanny, with a slight pat of her pretty 
foot upon the floor. 

“My love, you’re quite right,” said 
Mr. Sparkler, “ and I know I have a 
habit of it. What I wished to declare 
was, that nothing can be a greater hap- 
piness to myself, myself, — next to the 
happiness of being united to pre-emi- 
nently the most glorious of girls, — 
than "to have the happiness of cultivat- 
ing the affectionate acquaintance of 
Amy. I may not myself,” said Mr. 
Sparkler, manfully, “be up to the mark 
on some other subjects at a short notice, 
and I am aware that if you were to poll 
Society, the general opinion would be 
that I am not ; but on the subject of 
Amy, I am up to the mark ! ” 

Mr. Sparkler kissed her, in witness 
thereof. 

“ A knife and fork and an apartment,” 
proceeded Mr. Sparkler, growing, in 
comparison with his oratorical antece- 
dents, quite diffuse, “will ever be at 
Amy’s disposal. My Governor, I am 
sure, will always be proud to entertain 
one whom I so much esteem. And re- 
garding my mother,” said Mr. Sparkler 
“who is a remarkably fine woman, 
with — ” 

“ Edmund, Edmund ! ” cried Miss 
Fanny, as before. 

“With submission, my soul,” pleaded 
Mr. Sparkler. “ I know I have a hab- 
it of it, and I thank you very much, 
my adorable girl, for taking the trouble 
to correct it ; but my mother is ad- 
mitted on all sides to be a remarkably 
fine woman, and she really hasn’t any.” 

“That may be, or may not be,” re- 
turned Fanny, “but pray don’t men- 
tion it any more.” 

“ I will not, my love,” said Mr. 
Sparkler. 


346 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


“ Then, in fact, you have nothing 
more to say, Edmund ; have you ? ” 
inquired Fanny. 

“ So far from it, my adorable girl,” 
answered Mr. Sparkler, “ I apologize 
for having said so much.” 

Mr. Sparkler perceived, by a kind of 
inspiration, that the question implied, 
had he not better go? He therefore 
withdrew the fraternal railing, and 
neatly said that he thought he would, 
with submission, take his leave. He 
did not go without being congratulated 
by Amy, as well as she could discharge 
that office in the flutter and distress of 
her spirits. 

When she was gone, she said, “ O 
Fanny, Fanny!” and turned to her 
sister in the bright window, and fell 
upon her bosom and cried there. Fan- 
ny laughed at first ; but soon laid her 
face against her sister’s and cried too 
— a little. It was the last time Fanny 
ever showed that there was any hidden, 
suppressed, or conquered feeling in her 
on that matter. From that hour, the 
way she had chosen lay before her, and 
she trod it with her own imperious, self- 
willed step. 


CHAPTER XV. 

NO JUST CAUSE OR IMPEDIMENT WHY 
THESE TWO PERSONS SHOULD NOT 
BE JOINED TOGETHER. 

Mr. Dorrit, on being informed by 
his elder daughter that she had ac- 
cepted matrimonial overtures from Mr. 
Sparkler, to whom she had plighted 
her troth, received the communication 
at once with great dignity and with a 
large display of parental pride ; his 
dignity dilating with the widened pros- 
pect of advantageous ground from 
which to make acquaintances, and his 
parental pride being developed by Miss 
Fanny’s ready sympathy with that great 
object of his existence. He gave her 
to understand that her noble ambition 
found harmonious echoes in his heart ; 
and bestowed his blessing on her as a 
child brimful of duty and good princi- 
ple, self-devoted to the aggrandizement 
of the family name. 


To Mr. Sparkler, when Miss Fanny 
permitted him to appear, Mr. Dorrit 
said, he would not disguise that the 
alliance Mr. Sparkler did him the. honor 
to propose was highly congenial to his 
feelings ; both as being in unison with 
the spontaneous affections of his daugh- 
ter Fanny, and as opening a family con- 
nection of a gratifying nature with Mr. 
Merdle, the master spirit of the age. 
Mrs. Merdle also, as a leading lady 
rich in distinction, elegance, grace, and 
beauty, he mentioned in very laudatory 
terms. He felt it his duty to remark 
(he was sure a gentleman of Mr. Spark- 
ler’s fine sense would interpret him 
with all delicacy), that he could not 
consider this proposal definitively deter- 
mined on, until he should have had 
the privilege of holding some corre- 
spondence with Mr. Merdle ; and of 
ascertaining it to be so far accordant 
with the views of that eminent gentle- 
man as that his (Mr. Dorrit’s) daughter 
would be received on that footing, 
which her station in life and her dowry 
and expectations warranted him in re- 
quiring that she should maintain in 
what he trusted he might be allowed, 
without the appearance of being mer- 
cenary, to call the Eye of the Great 
World. While saying this, which his 
character as a gentleman of some little 
station, and his character as a father, 
equally demanded of him, he would 
not be so diplomatic as to conceal that 
the proposal remained in hopeful abey- 
ance and under conditional acceptance, 
and that he thanked Mr. Sparkler for 
the compliment rendered to himself and 
to his family. He concluded with some 
further and more general observations 
on the — ha — character of an indepen- 
dent gentleman and the — hum — char- 
acter of a possibly too partial and ad- 
miring parent. To sum the whole up 
shortly, he received Mr. Sparkler’s offer 
very much as he would have received 
three or four half-crowns from him in 
the days that were gone. 

Mr. Sparkler, finding himself stunned 
by the words thus heaped upon his 
inoffensive head, made a brief though 
pertinent rejoinder : the same being 
neither more nor less than that he had 
long perceived Miss Fanny to have no 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


347 


nonsense about her, and that he had no 
doubt of its being all right with his 
Governor. At that point, the object 
of hiS affections shut him up like a box 
with a spring lid, and sent him away. 

Proceeding shortly afterwards to pay 
his respects to the Bosom, Mr. Dorrit 
was received by it with great considera- 
tion. Mrs. Merdle had heard of this 
affair from Edmund. She had been 
surprised at first, because she had not 
thought Edmund a marrying man. 
Society had not thought Edmund a 
marrying man. Still, of course she had 
seen, as a woman (we women did in- 
stinctively see these things, Mr. Dor- 
rit ! ) that Edmund had been immense- 
ly captivated by Miss Dorrit, and she 
had openly said that Mr. Dorrit had 
much to answer for in bringing so 
charming a girl abroad to turn the 
heads of his countrymen. 

“ Have I the honor to conclude, 
madam,” said Mr. Dorrit, “that the 
direction which Mr. Sparkler’s affec- 
tions have taken is' — ha — approved 
of by you? ” 

“I assure you, Mr. Dorrit,” returned 
the lady, “ that, personally, I am 
charmed.” 

That was very gratifying to Mr. Dorrit., 

“ Personally,” repeated Mrs. Mer- 
dle, “ charmed. ” 

This casual repetition of the word 
“personally” moved Mr. Dorrit to ex- 
press his hope that Mr. Merdle’s ap- 
proval, too, v.'ould not be wanting. 

“ I cannot,” said Mrs. Merdle, 
“ take upon myself to answer positively 
for Mr. Merdle ; gentlemen, especial- 
ly gentlemen who are what Society 
calls capitalists, having their own ideas 
of these matters. But I should think, 

— merely giving an opinion, Mr. Dorrit, 

— I should think Mr. Merdle would be, 
upon the whole,” here she held a re- 
view of herself before adding at her leis- 
ure, “ quite charmed.” 

At the mention of gentlemen whom 
Society called capitalists, Mr. Dorrit 
had coughed, as if some internal demur 
were breaking out of him. Mrs. Mer- 
dle had observed it, and went on to take 
up the cue. 

“ Though indeed, Mr. Dorrit, it is 
scarcely necessary for me to make that 


remark, except in the mere openness 
of saying what is uppermost to one 
whom I so highly regard, and with 
whom I hope I may have the pleasure 
of being brought into still more agree- 
able relations. For one cannot but 
see the great probability of your con- 
sidering such things from Mr. Merdle’s 
own point of view, except indeed that 
circumstances have made it Mr. Mer- 
dle’s accidental fortune, or misfortune, 
to be engaged in business transactions, 
and that they, however vast, may a lit- 
tle cramp his horizon. I am a very 
child as to having any notion of busi- 
ness,” said Mrs. Merdle ; “ but I am 
afraid, Mr. Dorrit, it may have that 
tendency.” 

This skilful see-saw of Mr. Dorrit 
and Mr. Merdle, so that each of them 
sent the other up, and each of them sent 
the other down, and neither had the 
advantage, acted as a sedative on Mr. 
Dorrit’s cough. He remarked, with his 
utmost politeness, that he must beg to 
protest against its being supposed, even 
by Mrs. Merdle, the accomplished and 
graceful (to which compliment she bent 
herself), that such enterprises as Mr. 
Merdle’s, apart as they were from the 
puny undertakings of the rest of men, 
had any lower tendency than to enlarge 
and expand the genius in which they 
were conceived. “You are generosity 
itself,” said Mrs. Merdle, in return, 
smiling her best smile ; “ let us hope 
so. But I confess I am almost super- 
stitious in my ideas about business.” 

Mr. Dorrit threw in another compli- 
ment here, to the effect that business, 
like the time which was precious in it, 
was made for slaves ; and that it was 
not for Mrs. Merdle, who ruled all hearts 
at her supreme pleasure, to have any- 
thing to do with it. Mrs. Merdle 
laughed, and conveyed to Mr. Dorrit 
an idea that the Bosom flushed, — 
which was one of her best effects. 

“ I say so much,” she then explained, 
“ merely because Mr. Merdle has al- 
ways taken the greatest interest in Ed- 
mund, and has always expressed the 
strongest desire to advance his pros- 
pects. Edmund’s public position I 
think you know. His private position 
rests wholly with Mr. Merdle. In my 


348 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


foolish incapacity for business, I as- 
sure you I know no more. 

Mr. Dorrit again expressed, in his own 
way, the sentiment that business was be- 
low the ken of enslavers and enchant- 
resses. He then mentioned his inten- 
tion, as a gentleman and a parent, of 
writing to Mr. Merdle. Mrs. Merdle 
concurred with all her heart, — or with 
all her art, which was exactly the same 
thing, — and herself despatched a pre- 
paratory letter, by the next post, to the 
eighth wonder of the world. 

In his epistolary communication, as 
in his dialogues and discourses on the 
great question to which it related, Mr. 
Dorrit surrounded the subject with 
flourishes, as writing-masters embellish 
copy-books and ciphering-books : where 
the titles of the elementary rules of 
arithmetic diverge into swans, eagles, 
griffins, and other caligraphic recrea- 
tions, and where the capital letters go 
out of their minds and bodies into ec- 
stasies of pen and ink. Nevertheless, 
he did render the purport of his letter 
sufficiently clear to enable Mr. Merdle 
to make a decent pretence of having 
learnt it from that source. Mr. Merdle 
replied to it, accordingly. Mr. Dorrit 
replied to Mr. Merdle ; Mr. Merdle 
replied to Mr. Dorrit ; and it was soon 
announced that the corresponding pow- 
ers had come to a satisfactory under- 
standing. 

Now, and not before, Miss Fanny 
burst upon the scene, completely ar- 
rayed for her new part. Now, and not 
before, she wholly absorbed Mr. Spark- 
ler in her light, and shone for both and 
twenty more. No longer feeling that 
want of a defined place and character 
which had caused her so much trouble, 
this fair ship began to steer steadily on 
a shaped course, and to swim with a 
weight and balance that developed her 
sailing qualities. 

“The preliminaries being so satis- 
factorily arranged, I think I will now, 
my dear,” said Mr. Dorrit, “ announce 
— ha — formally, to Mrs. General — ” 

“ Papa,” returned Fanny, taking him 
up short, upon that name, “ I don’t see 
what Mrs. General has got to do with 
it.” 

“My dear,” said Mr. Dorrit, “it 


will be an act of courtesy to — hum — 
a lady, well bred and refined, — ” 

“ O, I am sick of Mrs. General’s 
good breeding and refinement, papa,” 
said Fanny. “ I am tired of Mrs. Gen- 
eral.” 

“ Tired,” repeated Mr. Dorrit, in re- 
proachful astonishment, “ of — ha — 
Mrs. General ! ” 

“Quite disgusted with her, papa,” 
said Fanny. “ I really don’t see what 
she has to do with my marriage. Let 
her keep to her own matrimonial proj- 
ects, — if she has any.” 

“ Fanny,” returned Mr. Dorrit, with 
a grave and weighty slowness upon him, 
contrasting strongly with his daughter’s 
levity, “ I beg the favor of your ex- 
plaining — ha — what it is you mean.” 

“I mean, papa,” said Fanny, “that 
if Mrs. General should happen to have 
any matrimonial projects of her own, I 
dare say they are quite enough to occu- 
py her spare time. And that if she has 
not, so much the better ; but still I 
don’t wish to have the honor of making 
announcements to her.” 

“Permit me to ask you, Fanny,” 
said Mr. Dorrit, “why not?” 

“ Because she can find my engage- 
ment out for herself, papa,” retorted 
Fanny. “She is watchful enough, I 
dare say. I think I have seen her so. 
Let her find it out for herself. If she 
should not find it out for herself, she 
will know it when I am married. And 
I hope you will not consider me want- 
ing in affection for you, papa, if I say 
it strikes me that will be quite time 
enough for Mrs. General.” 

“Fanny,” returned Mr. Dorrit, “ I 
am amazed, I am displeased, by this — 
hum — this capricious and unintelligible 
display of animosity towards — ha — 
Mrs. General.” 

“Do not, if you please, papa,” urged 
Fanny, “call it animosity, because I 
assure you I do not consider Mrs. Gen- 
eral worth my animosity.” 

At this Mr. Dorrit rose from his 
chair, with a fixed look of severe re- 
proof, and remained standing in his 
dignity before his daughter. His daugh- 
ter, turning the bracelet on her arm, 
and now looking at him, and now look- 
ing from him, said, “Very well, papa. 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


349 


I am truly sorry if you don’t like it ; 
but I can’t help it. I am not a child, 
and I am not Amy, and I must speak.” 

“Fanny,” gasped Mr. Dorrit, after 
a majestic silence, “ if I request you to 
remain here, while I formally announce 
to Mrs. General, as an exemplary lady 
who is — hum — a trusted member of 
this family, the — ha — the change that 
is contemplated among us; if I — not 
only request it, but — hum — insist 
upon it — ” 

“ O papa,” Fanny broke in with 
pointed significance, “if you make so 
much of it as that, I have in duty noth- 
ing to do but comply. I hope I may 
have my thoughts upon the subject, 
however, for 1 really cannot help it 
under the circumstances.” So Fanny 
sat down with a meekness which, in 
the junction of extremes, became de- 
fiance ; and her father, either not deign- 
ing to answer, or not knowing what 
to answer, summoned Mr. Tinkler in- 
to his presence. 

“ Mrs. General.” 

Mr. Tinkler, unused to receive such 
short orders in connection with the fair 
varnisher, paused. Mr. Dorrit, seeing 
the whole Marshalsea and all its Testi- 
monials in the pause, instantly flew at 
him with, “ How dare you, sir? What 
do you mean ?” 

“ I beg your pardon, sir,” pleaded Mr. 
Tinkler, “ I was wishful to know — ” 

“ You wished to know nothing, sir,” 
cried Mr. Dorrit, highly flushed. “Don’t 
tell me you did. Ha. You didn’t. 
You are guilty of mockery, sir.”. 

“I assure you, sir — ” Mr. Tinkler 
began. 

“ Don’t assure me ! ” said Mr. Dorrit. 
“ I will not be assured by a domestic. 
You are guilty of mockery. You shall 
leave me — hum — the whole establish- 
ment shall leave me. What are you 
waiting for?” 

“ Only for my orders, sir.” 

“It’s false,” said Mr. Dorrit, “you 
have your orders. Ha — hum. My 
compliments to Mrs. General, and I 
beg the fa,vor of her coming to me, if 
quite convenient, for a few minutes. 
Those are your orders.’.’ 

In his execution of this mission, Mr. 
Tinkler perhaps expressed that Mr. 


Dorrit was in a raging fume. However 
that was, Mrs. General’s skirts were 
very speedily heard outside, coming 
along — one might almost have said 
bouncing along — with unusual expedi- 
tion. Albeit, they settled down at the 
door and swept into the room with their 
customary coolness. 

“Mrs. General,” said Mr. Dorrit, 
“take a chair.” 

Mrs. General, with a graceful curve 
of acknowledgment, descended into the 
chair which Mr. Dorrit offered. 

“ Madam,” pursued that gentleman, 
“ as you have had the kindness to un- 
dertake the — hum — formation of my 
daughters, and as I am persuaded that 
nothing nearly affecting them can — ha 

— be indifferent to you — ” 

“ Wholly impossible,” said Mrs. Gen- 
eral in the calmest of ways. 

“ — I therefore wish to announce to 
you, madam, that my daughter now 
present — ” 

Mrs. General made a slight inclina- 
tion of her head to Fanny. Who made 
a very low inclination of her head to 
Mrs. General, and came loftily upright 
again. 

“ — That my daughter Fanny is — ha 

— contracted to be married to Mr. 
Sparkler, with whom you are acquaint- 
ed. Hence, madam, you will be re- 
lieved of half your difficult charge — ha 

— difficult charge.” Mr. Dorrit re- 
peated it with his angry eye on F anny. 
“But not, I hope, to the — hum — 
diminution of any other portion, direct 
or indirect, of the footing you have at 
present the kindness to occupy in my 
family.” 

“ Mr. Dorrit,” returned Mrs. General, 
with her gloved hands resting on one 
another in exemplary repose, “is ever 
considerate, and ever but too apprecia- 
tive of my friendly services.” 

(Miss Fanny coughed, as much as to 
say, “You are right.”) 

“ Miss Dorrit has no doubt exercised 
the soundest discretion of which the 
circumstances admitted, and I trust will 
allow me to offer her my sincere con- 
gratulations. When free from the tram- 
mels of passion,” Mrs. General closed 
her eyes at the word, as if she could not 
utter it and see anybody, — “ when oc- 


350 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


curring with the approbation of near 
relatives, — and when cementing the 
proud structure of a family edifice, — 
these are usually auspicious events. I 
trust Miss Dorrit will allow me to offer 
her my best congratulations.” 

Here Mrs. General stopped, and 
added internally, for the setting of her 
face, “ Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes, 
and prism.” 

“Mr. Dorrit,” she superadded aloud, 
“ is ever most obliging ; and for the 
attention, and I will add distinction, of 
having this confidence imparted to me 
by himself and Miss Dorrit at this early 
time, I beg to offer the tribute of my 
thanks. My thanks, and my congratu- 
lations, are equally the meed of Mr. 
Dorrit and of Miss Dorrit.” 

“To me,” observed Miss Fanny, 
“ they are excessively gratifying, — in- 
expressibly so. The relief of finding 
that you have no objection to make, 
Mrs. General, quite takes a load off my 
mind, I am sure. I hardly know what 
I should have done,” saicl Fanny, “if 
you had interposed any objection, Mrs. 
General.” 

Mrs. General changed her gloves, as 
to the right glove being uppermost and 
the left undermost, with a Prunes and 
Prism smile. 

“ To preserve your approbation, Mrs. 
General,” said Fanny, returning the 
smile with one in which there was no 
trace of those ingredients, “will of 
course be the highest object of my mar- 
ried life ; to lose it, would pf course be 
perfect wretchedness. I am sure your 
great kindness will not object, and I 
hope papa will not object, to my cor- 
recting a small mistake you have made, 
however. The best of us are so liable 
to mistakes, that even you, Mrs. Gen- 
eral, have fallen into a little error. The 
attention and distinction you have so 
impressively mentioned, Mrs. General, 
as attaching to this confidence, are, I 
have no doubt, of the most compliment- 
ary and gratifying description ; but they 
don’t at all proceed from me. The 
merit of having consulted you on the 
subject would have been so great in me, 
that I feel I must not lay claim to it 
when it really is not mine. It is wholly 
papa’s. I am deeply obliged to you for 


your encouragement and patronage, but 
it was papa who asked for it. I have to 
thank you, Mrs. General, for relieving 
my breast of a great weight by so hand- 
somely giving your consent to my en- 
gagement, but you have really nothing 
to thank me for. I hope you will al- 
ways approve of my proceedings after I 
have left home, and that my sister also 
may long remain the favored object of 
your condescension, Mrs. General.” 

With this address, which was de- 
livered in her politest manner, Fanny 
left the room with an elegant and cheer- 
ful air — to tear up stairs with a flushed 
face as soon as she was out of hearing, 
pounce in upon her sister, call her a 
little Dormouse, shake her for the bet- 
ter opening of her eyes, tell her what 
had passed below, and ask her what she 
thought about pa now? 

Towards Mrs. Merdle the young lady 
comported herself with great indepen- 
dence and self-possession ; but not as 
yet w’ith any more decided opening of 
hostilities. Occasionally they had a 
slight skirmish, as when Fanny con- 
sidered herself patted on the back by 
that lady, or as when Mrs. Merdle 
looked particularly young and well ; 
but Mrs. Merdle always soon terminated 
those passages of arms by sinking among 
her cushions with the gracefullest indif- 
ference, and finding her attention other- 
wise engaged. Society (for that myste- 
rious creature sat upon the Seven Hills 
too) found Miss Fanny vastly improved 
by her engagement. She was much 
more accessible, much more free and 
engaging, much less exacting ; insomuch 
that she now entertained a host of fol- 
lowers and admirers, to the bitter indig- 
nation of ladies with daughters to marry, 
who were to he regarded as having re- 
volted from Society on the Miss Dorrit 
grievance, and erected a rebellious 
standard. Enjoying the flutter she 
caused, Miss Dorrit not only haughtily 
moved through it in her own proper 
person, but haughtily, even ostenta- 
tiously, led Mr. "Sparkler through it 
too : seeming to say to them all, “ If I 
think proper to march among you in 
triumphal procession attended by this 
weak captive in bonds, rather than a 
stronger one, that is my. business. 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


35 1 


Enough that I choose to do it ! ” Mr. 
Sparkler, for his part, questioned noth- 
ing ; but went wherever he was taken, 
did whatever he was told, felt that for 
his bride elect to be distinguished was 
for him to be distinguished on the 
easiest terms, and was truly grateful for 
being so openly acknowledged. 

The winter passing on towards the 
spring while this condition of affairs pre- 
valied, it became necessary for Mr. 
Sparkler to repair to England, and 
take his appointed part in the expres- 
sion and direction of its genius, learn- 
ing, commerce, spirit, and sense. The 
land of Shakespeare, Milton, Bacon, 
Newton, Watt, — the land of a host 
of past and present abstract philoso- 
phers, natural philosophers, and subdu- 
ers of Nature and Art in their myriad 
forms, — called to Mr. Sparkler to come 
and take care of it, lest it should perish. 
Mr. Sparkler, unable to resist the ago- 
nized cry from the depths of his coun- 
try’s soul, declared that he must go. 

It followed that the question was ren- 
dered pressing when, where, and how 
Mr. Sparkler should be married to the 
foremost girl in all this world with no 
nonsense about her. Its solution, af- 
ter some little mystery and secrecy, 
Miss Fanny herself announced to her 
sister. 

“ Now, my child,” said she, seeking 
her out one day, “ I am going to tell you 
something. It is only this moment 
broached ; and naturally I hurry to 
you the moment it is broached.” 

“ Your marriage, Fanny ? ” 

“My precious child,” said Fanny, 
“don’t anticipate me. Let me impart 
my confidence to you, you flurried lit- 
tle thing, in my own way. As to your 
guess, if I answered it literally, I should 
answer ho. F or really it is not my mar- 
riage that is in question half as much as 
it is Edmund’s.” 

Little Dorrit looked, and perhaps not 
altogether without cause, somewhat at a 
loss to understand this fine distinction. 

“ I am in no difficulty,” exclaimed 
Fanny, “and in no hurry. I am not 
wanted at any public office, or to give 
any vote anywhere else. But Edmund 
is. And Edmund is deeply dejected at 
the idea of going away by himself, and, 


indeed, I don’t like that he should be 
trusted by himself. For, if it ’s possi- 
ble — and it generally is — to do a 
foolish thing, he is sure to do it.” 

As she concluded this impartial sum- 
mary of the reliance that might be safe- 
ly placed upon her future husband, she 
took off, with an air of business, the 
bonnet she wore, and dangled it by 
its strings upon the ground. 

“ It is far more Edmund’s question, 
therefore, than mine. However, we 
need say no more about that. That is 
self-evident on the face of it. Well, 
my dearest Amy ! The point arising, 
is he to go by himself, or is he not to 
go by himself, this other point arises, 
are we to be married here and short- 
ly, or are we to be married at home 
months hence?” 

“ I see I am going to lose you, Fan- 
ny.” 

“ What a little thing you are,” cried 
Fanny, half tolerant and half impatient, 
“ for anticipating one ! Pray, my dar- 
ling, hear me out. That woman,” she 
spoke of Mrs. Merdle, of course, “re- 
mains here until after Easter ; so, in 
the case of my being married here and 
going to London with Edmund, I 
should have the start of her. That is 
something. Further, Amy. That wo- 
man being out of the way, I don’t 
know that I greatly object to Mr. 
Merdle’s proposal to pa that Edmund 
and I should take up our abode in 
that house — you know — where you 
once went with a dancer, my dear — 
until our own. house can be chosen and 
fitted up. Further still, Amy. Papa 
having always intended to go to town 
himself, in the spring, — you see, if 
Edmund and I were married here, we 
might go off to Florence, where papa 
might join us, and we might all three 
travel home together. Mr. Merdle has 
entreated pa to stay with him in that 
same mansion I have mentioned, and 
I suppose he will. But he is master 
of his own actions ; and upon that point 
(which is not at all material), I can’t 
speak positively.” 

The difference between papa’s being 
master of his own actions and Mr. 
Sparkler’s being nothing of the. sort, 
was forcibly expressed by F anny in her 


352 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


manner of stating the case. Not that 
her sister noticed it ; for she was di- 
vided between regret at the coming 
separation, and a lingering wish that 
she had been included in the plans for 
visiting England. 

“ And these are the arrangements, 
Fanny, dear?” 

“Arrangements!” repeated Fann}'. 
“ Now, really, child, you are a little 
trying. You know I particularly guard- 
ed myself against laying my words 
open to any such construction. What 
I said was, that certain questions pre- 
sent themselves ; and these are the 
questions.” 

Little Dorrit’s thoughtful eyes met 
hers, tenderly and quietly. 

“Now, my own sweet girl,” said 
Fanny, weighing her bonnet by the 
strings with considerable impatience, 
“it ’s no use staring. A little owl could 
stare. I look to you for advice, Amy. 
What do you advise me to do ? ” 

“Do you think,” asked Little Dorrit 
persuasively, after a short hesitation, — 
“do you think, Fanny, that if you 
were to put it off for a few months, it 
might be, considering all things, best ?” 

“ No, little Tortoise,” retorted Fan- 
ny, with exceeding sharpness. “ I 
don’t think anything of the kind.” 

Here she threw her bonnet from her 
altogether, and flounced into a chair. 
But, becoming affectionate almost im- 
mediately, she flounced; out of it again, 
and kneeled down on the floor to take 
her sister, chair and all, in her arms. 

“Don’t suppose I am. hasty or un- 
kind, darling, because I really am not. 
But you are such a little oddity ! You 
make one bite your head off, when one 
wants to be soothing beyond everything. 
Didn’t I tell you, you dearest baby, 
that Edmund can’t be trusted by him- 
self? And don’t you know that he 
can’t ? ” 

“Yes, yes, Fanny. You said so, I 
know.” 

“ And you know it, I know,” retorted 
Fanny. “ Well, my precious child ! 
If he is not to be trusted by himself, 
it follows, I suppose, that I should go 
with him ? ” 

“It — seems so, love,” said Little 
Dorrit. 


“Therefore, having heard the ar- 
rangements that are feasible to carry 
out that object, am I to understand, 
dearest Amy, that on the whole you 
advise me to make them ? ” 

“ It — seems so, love,” said Little 
Dorrit again. 

“Very well!” cried Fanny with an 
air of resignation, “ then 1 suppose it 
must be done ! I came to you, my 
sweet, the moment I saw the doubt, 
and the necessity of deciding. I have 
now decided. So let it be ! ” 

After yielding herself up, in this pat- 
tern manner, to sisterly advice and the 
force of circumstances, Fanny became 
quite benignant : as one who had laid 
her own inclinations at the feet of her 
dearest friend, and felt a glow of con- 
science in having made the sacrifice. 
“ After all, my Amy,” she said to her 
sister, “ you are the best of small crea- 
tures, and full of good sense ; and I 
don’t know what I shall ever do with- 
out you ! ” 

With which words she folded her in 
a closer embrace, and a really fond one. 

“Not that I contemplate doing with- 
out you, Amy, by any means, for I 
hope we shall ever be next to insepara- 
ble. And now, my pet, I am going to 
give you a word of advice. When you 
are left alone here with Mrs. General — ” 
“ I am to be left alone here with Mrs. 
General ? ” said Little Dorrit, quietly. 

“ Why, of course, my precious, till 
papa comes back ! Unless you call Ed- 
ward company, which he certainly is 
not, even when he is here, and still 
more certainly is not when he is away 
at Naples or in Sicily. I was going to 
say, — but you are such a beloved little 
Marplot for putting one out, — when 
you are left alone here with Mrs. Gen- 
eral, Amy, don’t you let her slide into 
any sort of artful understanding with 
you that she is looking after pa, or that 
pa is looking after her. She will, if 
she can. / know her sly manner of 
feeling her way with those gloves of 
hers. But don’t you comprehend her 
on any account. And if pa should tell 
you, when he comes back, that lie has 
it in contemplation to make Mrs. Gen- 
eral your mamma (which is not the less 
likely because I am going away), my 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


353 


advice to you is, that you say at 
once, * Papa, I beg to object most 
strongly. Fanny cautioned me about 
this, and she objected, and I object.’ 
I don’t mean to say that any objection 
from you, Amy, is likely to be of the 
smallest effect, or that I think you likely 
to make it with any degree of firmness. 
But there is a principle involved, — a 
filial principle, — and I implore you not 
to submit to be mother-in-lawed by 
Mrs. General, without asserting it in 
making every one about you as uncom- 
fortable as possible. I don’t expect you 
to stand by it, — indeed, I know you 
won’t, pa being concerned, — but I wish 
to rouse you to a sense of duty. As to 
any help from me, or as to any opposi- 
tion that I can offer to such a match, 
you shall not be left in the lurch, my 
love. Whatever weight I may derive 
from my position as a married girl not 
wholly devoid of attractions, — used, as 
that position always shall be, to oppose 
that woman, — I will bring to bear, you 
may depend upon it, on the head and 
false hair (for I am confident it ’s not all 
real, ugly as it is, and unlikely as it ap- 
pears that any one in their senses would 
go to the expense of buying it) of Mrs. 
General ! ” 

Little Dorrit received this counsel 
without venturing to oppose it, but 
without giving Fanny any reason to be- 
lieve that she intended to act upon it. 
Having, now, as it were, formally wound 
up her single life and arranged her world- 
ly affairs, Fanny proceeded with char- 
acteristic ardor to prepare for the serious 
change in her condition. 

The preparation consisted in the de- 
spatch of her maid to Paris under the 
protection of the Courier, for the pur- 
chase of that outfit for a bride on which 
it would be extremely low, in the pres- 
ent narrative, to bestow an English 
name, but to which (on a vulgar princi- 
ple it observes of adhering to the lan- 
guage in which it professes to be writ- 
ten) it declines to give a French one. 
The rich and beautiful wardrobe pur- 
chased by these agents in the course of 
a few weeks made its way through the 
intervening country, bristling with cus- 
tom-houses, garrisoned by an immense 
arm of shabby mendicants in uniform, 


who incessantly repeated the Beggar’s 
Petition over it, as if every individual 
warrior among them were the ancient 
Belisarius ; and of whom there were so 
many Legions, that unless the Courier 
had expended just one bushel and a 
half of silver money in relieving their 
distresses, they would have worn the 
wardrobe out before it got to Rome, by 
turning it over and over. Through all 
such dangers, however, it was trium- 
phantly brought, inch by inch, and ar- 
rived at its journey’s end in fine condi- 
tion. 

There it was exhibited to select com- 
panies of female viewers, in whose gen- 
tle bosoms it awakened implacable feel- 
ings. Concurrently, active preparations 
were made for the day on which some 
of its treasures were to be publicly dis- 
played. Cards of breakfast-invitation 
were sent out to half the English in the 
city of Romulus ; the other half made 
arrangements to be under arms, as crit- 
icising volunteers, at various outer 
points of the solemnity. The most high 
and illustrious English Signor Edgardo 
Dorrit came post through the deep mud 
and ruts (from forming a surface under 
the improving Neapolitan nobility) to 
grace the occasion. The best hotel, 
and all its culinary myrmidons, were 
set to work to prepare the feast. The 
drafts of Mr. Dorrit almost constituted 
a run on the Torlonia Bank. The 
British Consul hadn’t had such a 
marriage in the whole of his Consular- 
ity. 

The day came, and the She- Wolf in 
the Capitol might have snarled with 
envy to see how the Island Savages 
contrived these things now-a-days. 
The murderous-headed statues of the 
wicked Emperors of the Soldiery, whom 
sculptors had not been able to flatter out 
of their villanous hideousness, might 
have come off their pedestals to run 
away with the Bride. The choked old 
fountain, where erst the Gladiators 
washed, might have leaped into life 
again to honor the ceremony. The 
Temple of Vesta might have sprung up 
anew from its ruins, expressly to lend 
its countenance to the occasion. Might 
have done, but did not. Like sentient 
things, — even like the lords and ladies 


23 


354 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


of creation sometimes, — might have 
done much, but did nothing. The cel- 
ebration went off with admirable pomp ; 
monks in black robes, white robes, and 
russet robes stopped to look after the car- 
riages ; wandering peasants, in fleeces 
of sheep, begged and piped under the 
house windows ; the English volunteers 
defiled ; the day wore on to the hour of 
vespers ; the festival w’ore away ; the 
thousand churches rang their bells with- 
out any reference to it; and St. Peter 
denied that he had anything to do with 
it. 

But by that time the Bride was near 
the end of the first day’s journey to- 
wards Florence. It was the peculiarity 
of these nuptials that they were all 
Bride. Nobody noticed the Bride- 
groom. Nobody noticed the first 
Bridesmaid. Few could have seen 
Little Dorrit (who held that post) for 
the glare, even supposing many to have 
sought her. So the Bride had mounted 
into her handsome chariot, incidentally 
accompanied by the Bridegroom ; and, 
after rolling for a few minutes smoothly 
over a fair pavement, had begun to jolt 
through a Slough of Despond, and 
through a long, long avenue of wrack 
and ruin. Other nuptial carriages are 
said to have gone the same road, be- 
fore and since. 

If Little Dorrit found herself left a 
little lonely and a little low that night, 
nothing would have done so much 
against her feeling of depression as the 
being able to sit at work by her father, 
as in the old time, and help him to his 
supper and his rest. But that was not 
to be thought of now, when they sat in 
the state-equipage with Mrs. General 
on the coach-box. And as to supper ! 
If Mr. Dorrit had wanted supper, there 
was an Italian cook and there was a 
Swiss confectioner, who must have put 
on caps as high as the Pope’s Mitre, 
and have performed the mysteries of 
Alchemists in a copper-saucepanned 
laboratory below, before he could have 
got it. 

He was sententious and didactic that 
night. If he had been simply loving, 
he would have done Little Dorrit more 
good ; but she accepted him as he was, 
— when had she not accepted him as he 


was ! — and made the most and best of 
him. Mrs. General at length retired. 
Her retirement for the night was always 
her frostiest ceremony ; as if she felt it 
necessary that the human imagination 
should be chilled into stone, to prevent 
its following her. When she had gone 
through her rigid preliminaries, amount- 
ing to a sort of genteel platoon-exercise, 
she withdrew. Little Dorrit then put 
her arm round her father’s neck to bid 
him good night. 

“Amy, my dear,” said Mr. Dorrit, 
taking her by the hand, “this is the 
close of a day, that has — ha — greatly 
impressed and gratified me.” 

“ A little tired you, dear, too ? ” 

“ No,” said Mr. Dorrit, — “ no : lam 
not sensible of fatigue when it arises 
from an occasion so — hum — replete 
with gratification of the purest kind.” 

Little Dorrit was glad to find him in 
such heart, and smiled from her own 
heart. 

“ My dear,” he continued. “ This 
is an occasion — ha — teeming with a 
good example, — with a good example, 
my favorite and attached child — hum — 
to you.” 

Little Dorrit, fluttered by his words, 
did not know what to say, though he 
stopped as if he expected her to say 
something. 

“Amy,” he resumed, “ your dear sis- 
ter our Fanny, has contracted — ha hum 
— a marriage eminently calculated to 
extend the basis of our — ha — connec- 
tion, and to — hum — consolidate our 
social relations. My love, I trust that 
the time is not far distant when some — 
ha — eligible partner may be found for 
you.” 

“ O no ! Let me stay with you. I 
beg and pray that I may stay with you. 

I want nothing but to stay and take care 
of you ! ” 

She said it like one in sudden alarm. 

“ Nay, Amy, Amy,” said Mr. Dor- 
rit. “ This is weak and foolish, weak 
and foolish. You have a — ha — re- 
sponsibility imposed upon you by your 
position. It is to develop that posi- 
tion, and be — hum — worthy of that 
position. As to taking care of me, I 
can — ha — take care of myself. Or,” 
he added after a moment, “ if I should 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


355 


need to be taken care of, I — lium — 
can, with the — ha — blessing of Provi- 
dence, be taken care of. I — ha hum — 
I cannot, my dear child, think of en- 
grossing, and — ha — as it were, sacri- 
ficing you.” 

O what a time of day at which to be- 
gin that profession of self-denial ; at 
which to make it, with an air of tak- 
ing credit for it ; at which to believe it, 
if such a thing could be ! 

“ Don’t speak, Amy. I positively 
say I cannot do it. I — ha — must not 
doit. My — hum — conscience would 
not allow it. I therefore, my love, take 
the opportunity afforded by this gratify- 
ing and impressive occasion of — ha — 
solemnly remarking, that it is now a 
cherished wish and purpose of mine to 
see you — ha — eligibly (I repeat eligi- 
bly) married.” 

“ O no, dear ! Pray ! ” 

“Amy,” said Mr. Dorrit, “ I am well 
persuaded that if the topic were referred 
to any person of superior social knowl- 
edge, of superior delicacy and sense — 
let us say, for instance, to — ha — Mrs. 
General — that there would not be two 
opinions as to the — hum — affectionate 
character and propriety of my senti- 
ments. But as I know your loving and 
dutiful nature from — hum — from ex- 
perience, I am quite satisfied that it is 
necessary to say no more. I have — 
hum — no husband to propose at pres- 
ent, my dear ; I have not even one in 
view. I merely wish that we should — 
ha — understand each other. Hum. 
Good night, my dear and sole remaining 
daughter. Goodnight. Godblessyou!” 

If the thought ever entered Little 
Dorrit’s head, that night, that he could 
give her up lightly now, in his prosper- 
ity, and when he had it in his mind to 
replace her with a second wife, she 
drove it away. Faithful to him still,- as 
in the worst times through which she 
had borne him single-handed, she drove 
the thought away ; and entertained no 
harder reflection, in her tearful unrest, 
than that he now saw everything through 
their wealth, and through the care he 
always had upon him that they should 
continue rich, and grow richer. 

They sat in their equipage of state, 
with Mrs. General on the box, for three 


weeks longer, and then he started for 
Florence to join Fanny. Little Dorrit 
would have been glad to bear him com- 
pany so far, only for the sake of her 
own love, and then to have turned back 
alone, thinking of her dear England. 
But, though the Courier had gone on 
with the Bride, the Valet was next in 
the line ; and the succession would not 
have come to her, as long as any one 
could be got for money. 

Mrs. General took life easily — as 
easily, that is, as she could take any- 
thing — when the Roman establishment 
remained in their sole occupation ; and 
Little Dorrit would often ride out in a 
hired carriage that was left them, and 
alight alone and wander among the 
ruins of old Rome. The ruins of the 
vast old Amphitheatre, of the old Tem- 
ples, of the old commemorative Arches, 
of the old trodden highways, of the old 
tombs, besides being what they were to 
her, were ruins of the old Marshalsea, — 
ruins of her own old life, — ruins of the 
faces and forms that of old peopled it, — 
ruins of its loves, hopes, cares, and joys. 
Two ruined spheres of action andsuffer- 
ing. were before the solitary girl often 
sitting on some broken fragment ; and 
in the lonely places, under the blue sky, 
she saw them both together. 

Up, then, would come Mrs. General, 
taking all the color out of everything, 
as Nature and Art had taken it out of 
herself ; writing Prunes and Prism, in 
Mr. Eustace’s text, wherever she could 
lay a hand ; looking everywhere for Mr. 
Eustace and company, and seeing noth- 
ing else ; scratching up the driest little 
bones of antiquity, and bolting them 
whole without any human visitings, — 
like a Ghoul in gloves. 


CHAPTER XVI. 

GETTING ON. 

The newly-married pair, on their 
arrival in Harley Street, Cavendish 
Square, London, were received by the 
Chief Butler. That great man was not 
interested in them, but on the whole 
endured them. People must continue 


356 


LITTLE DORR IT. 


to be married and given in marriage, or 
Chief Butlers would not be wanted. 
As nations are made to be taxed, so 
families are made to be butlered. The 
Chief Butler, no doubt, reflected that 
the course of nature required the wealthy 
population to be kept up on his ac- 
count. 

He therefore condescended to look at 
the carriage from the hall door without 
frowning at it, and said in a very hand- 
some way to one of his men, “ Thomas, 
help with the luggage.” He even es- 
corted the Bride up stairs into Mr. 
Merdle’s presence ; but this must be 
considered as an act of homage to the 
sex (of which he was an admirer, being 
notoriously captivated by the charms of 
a certain Duchess), and not as a com- 
mittal of himself with the family. 

Mr. Merdle was slinking about the 
hearth-rug, waiting to welcome Mrs. 
Sparkler. His hand seemed to retreat 
up his sleeve as he advanced to do so, 
and he gave her such a superfluity of 
coat-cuff that it was like being received 
by the popular conception of Guy 
Fawkes. When he put his lips to hers, 
besides, he took himself into custody 
by the wrists, and backed himself among 
the ottomans and chairs and tables, as 
if he were his own police-officei', saying 
to himself, “ Now, none of that ! Come ! 
I ’ve got you, you know, and you go 
quietly along with me ! ” 

Mrs. Sparkler, installed in the rooms 
of state, — the innermost sanctuary of 
down, silk, chintz, and fine linen, — felt 
that so far her triumph was good, and 
her way made step by step. On the 
day before her marriage, she had be- 
stowed on Mrs. Merdle’s maid, with an 
air of gracious indifference, in Mrs. 
Merdle’s presence, a trifling little keep- 
sake (bracelet, bonnet, and two dresses, 
all new) about four times as valuable as 
the present formerly made by Mrs. Mer- 
dle to her. She was now established 
in Mrs. Merdle’s own rooms to which 
some extra touches had been given to 
render them more worthy of her occupa- 
tion. In her mind’s eye, as she lounged 
there, surrounded by every luxurious 
accessory that wealth could obtain or 
invention devise, she saw the fair bo- 
som that beat in unison with the exulta- 


tion of her thoughts competing with 
the bosom that had been famous so long, 
outshining it, and deposing it. Happy ? 
Fanny must have been happy. No 
more wishing one’s self dead now. 

The Courier had not approved of Mr. 
Dorrit’s staying in the house of a 
friend, and had preferred to take him 
to an hotel in Brook Street, Grosvenor 
Square. Mr. Merdle ordered his car- 
riage to be ready early in the morning, 
that he might wait upon Mr. Dorrit 
immediately after breakfast. 

Bright the carriage looked, sleek the 
horses looked, gleaming the harness 
looked, luscious and lasting the liveries 
looked. A rich, responsible turn-out. 
An equipage for a Merdle. Early peo- 
ple looked after it as it rattled along 
the streets, and said, with awe in their 
breath, “ There he goes ! ” 

There he went, until Brook Street 
stopped him. Then forth from its 
magnificent case came the jewel ; not 
lustrous in itself, but quite the con- 
trary. 

Commotion in the office of the hotel. 
Merdle ! The landlord, though a gen- 
tleman of a haughty spirit who had 
just driven a pair of thoroughbred 
horses into town, turned out to show 
him up stairs. The clerks and servants 
cut him off by back-passages, and were 
found accidentally hovering in door- 
ways and angles, that they might look 
upon him. Merdle ! O ye sun, moon, 
and stars, the great man ! The rich 
man, who had in a manner revised the 
New Testament, and already entered 
into the kingdom of heaven. The man 
who could have any one he chose to 
dine with him, and who had made the 
money ! As he went up the stairs, 
people were already posted on the 
lower stairs, that his shadow might 
fall upon them when he came down. 
So were the sick brought out and 
laid in the track of the Apostle, — who 
had not got into the good society, and 
had not made the money. 

Mr. Dorrit, dressing-gowned and 
newspapered, was at his breakfast. 
The Courier, with agitation, in his 
voice, announced “ Miss’ Mairdale ! ” 
Mr. Dorrit’s overwrought heart bound- 
ed as he leaped up. 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


357 


“Mr. Merdle, this is — ha — indeed 
an honor. Permit me to express the — 
hum — sense, the high sense, I enter- 
tain of this — ha, hum — highly grati- 
fying act of attention. I am well aware, 
sir, of the many demands upon your 
time, and its — ha — enormous value.” 
Mr. Dorrit could not say enormous 
roundly enough for his own satisfac- 
tion. “ That you should — ha — at 
this early hour, bestow any of your 
priceless time upon me, is — ha — a 
compliment that I acknowledge with 
the greatest esteem.” Mr. Dorrit posi- 
tively trembled in addressing the great 
man. 

Mr. Merdle uttered, in his subdued, 
inward, hesitating voice, a few sounds 
that were to no purpose whatever; 
and finally said, “ I am glad to see you, 
sir.” 

“ You are very kind,” said Mr. Dor- 
rit. “Truly kind.” By this time the 
visitor was seated, and was passing his 
great hand over his exhausted forehead. 
“You are well, I hope, Mr. Mer- 
dle?” 

“ I am as well as I — yes, I am as 
well as I usually am,” said Mr. Mer- 
dle. 

“Your occupations must be im- 
mense.” 

“Tolerably so. But — O dear no, 
there ’s not much the matter with 
said Mr. Merdle, looking round the 
room. 

“A little dyspeptic?” Mr. Dorrit 
hinted. 

“ Very likely. But I — O, I am well 
enough,” said Mr. Merdle. 

There were black traces on his lips 
where they met, as if a little train of 
unpowder had been fired there ; and 
e looked like a man who, if his natu- 
ral temperament had been quicker, 
would have been very feverish that 
morning. This, and his heavy way of 
passing his hand over his forehead, had 
prompted Mr. Dorrit’s solicitous in- 
quiries. 

“ Mrs. Merdle,” Mr. Dorrit insinuat- 
ingly pursued, “ I left, as you will be 
prepared to hear, the — ha — observed 
of all observers, the — hum — admired 
of all admirers, the leading fascination 
and charm of Society in Rome. She 


was looking wonderfully well when I 
quitted it.” 

“Mrs. Merdle,” said Mr. Merdle, 
“ is generally considered a very attrac- 
tive woman. And she is, no doubt. 
I am sensible of her being so.” 

“ Who can be otherwise?” respond- 
ed Mr. Dorrit. 

Mr. Merdle turned his tongue in 
his closed mouth, — it seemed rather 
a stiff and unmanageable tongue, — 
moistened his lips, passed his hand 
over his forehead again, and looked 
all round the room again, principally 
under the chairs. 

“ But,” he said, looking Mr. Dorrit 
in the face for the first time, and imme- 
diately afterwards dropping his eyes to 
the buttons of Mr. Dorrit’s waistcoat, 
“ if we speak of attractions, your daugh- 
ter ought to be the subject of our con- 
versation. She is extremely beautiful. 
Both in face and figure, she is quite un- 
common. When the young people ar- 
rived last night, I was really surprised 
to see such charms.” 

Mr. Dorrit’s gratification was such 
that he said — ha — he could not refrain 
from telling Mr. Merdle verbally, as he 
had already done by letter, what honor 
and happiness he felt in this union of 
their families. And he offered his hand. 
Mr. Merdle looked at the hand for a lit- 
tle while, took it on his for a moment as 
if his were a yellow salver or fish-slice, 
and then returned it to Mr. Dorrit. 

“I thought I would drive round the 
first thing,” said Mr. Merdle, “to offer 
my services, in case I can do anything 
for you ; and to say that I hope you 
will at least do me the honor of dining 
with me to-day, and every day when 
you are not better engaged, during your 
stay in town.” 

Mr. Dorrit was enraptured by these 
attentions. 

“Do you stay long, sir?” 

“ I have not at present the intention,” 
said Mr. Dorrit, “of — ha — exceeding 
a fortnight.” 

“That’s a \^ry short stay, after so 
long a journey, returned Mr. Merdle. 

“‘Hum. Yes,” said Mr. Dorrit. “But 
the truth is — ha — my dear Mr. Merdle, 
that I find a foreign life so well suited 
to my health and taste, that I — hum — 


358 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


have but two objects in my present visit 
to London. First, the — ha — the dis- 
tinguished happiness and — ha — privi- 
lege which I now enjoy and appreciate ; 
secondly, the arrangement — hum — the 
laying out, that is to say, in the best 
way of — ha, hum — my money.” 

“ Well, sir,” said Mr. Merdle, after 
turning his tongue again, “ if I can be 
of any use to you in that respect, you 
may command me.” 

Mr. Dorrit’s speech had had more 
hesitation in it than usual, as he ap- 
proached the ticklish topic, for he was 
not perfectly clear how so exalted a po- 
tentate might take it. He had doubts 
whether reference to any individual 
capital, or fortune, might not seem a 
wretchedly retail affair to so wholesale 
a dealer. Greatly relieved by Mr. Mer- 
dle’s affable offer of assistance, he caught 
at it directly, and heaped acknowledg- 
ments upon him. 

“ I scarcely — ha — dared,” said Mr. 
Dorrit, “ I assure you, to hope for so — 
hum — vast an advantage as your direct 
advice and assistance. Though of course 
I should, under any circumstances, like 
the — ha, hum — rest of the civilized 
world, have followed in Mr. Merdle’s 
train.” 

“You know we may almost say we 
are related, sir,” said Mr. Merdle, cu- 
riously interested in the pattern of the 
carpet, “and, therefore, you may con- 
sider me at your service.” 

“ Ha. Very handsome, indeed ! ” 
cried Mr. Dorrit. “ Ha. Most hand- 
some ! ” 

“ It would not,”- said Mr. Merdle, 
“be at the present moment easy for 
what I may call a mere outsider to come 
into any of the good things — of course 
I speak of my own good things — ” 

“ Of course, of course ! ” cried Mr. 
Dorrit, in a tone implying that there 
were no other good things. 

“ — Unless at a high price. At what 
we are accustomed to term a very long 
figure ! ” 

Mr. Dorrit laughed in the buoyancy 
of his spirit. Ha, ha, ha! Long fig- 
ure. Good. Ha. Very expressive, to 
be sure ! 

“ However,” said Mr. Merdle, “ I do 
generally retain in my own hands the 


power of exercising some preference — 
people in general would be pleased to 
call it favor — as a sort of compliment 
for my care and trouble.” 

“And public spirit and genius,” Mr. 
Dorrit suggested. 

Mr. Merdle, with a dry, swallowing 
action, seemed to dispose of those qual- 
ities like a bolus; then added, “As a 
sort of return for it. I will see, if you 
please, how I can exert this limited 
power (for people are jealous and it is 
limited) to your advantage.” 

“You are very good,” replied Mr. 
Dorrit. “ You are very good.” 

“ Of course,” said Mr. Merdle, “ there 
must be the strictest integrity and up- 
rightness in these transactions; there 
must be the purest faith between man 
and man ; there must be unimpeached 
and unimpeachable confidence ; or bus- 
iness could not be carried on.” 

Mr. Dorrit hailed these generous sen- 
timents with fervor. 

“ Therefore,” said Mr. Merdle, “ I 
can only give you a preference to a cer- 
tain extent.” 

“ I perceive. To a defined extent,” 
observed Mr. Dorrit. 

“Defined extent. And perfectlyabove- 
board. As to my advice, however,” 
said Mr. Merdle, “ that is another mat- 
ter. That, such as it is — ” . 

Oh ! Such as it was ! (Mr. Dorrit 
could not bear the faintest appearance 
of its being depreciated, even by Mr. 
Merdle himself.) 

“ — That, there is nothing in the bonds 
of spotless honor between myself and my 
fellow'-man to prevent my parting with, 
if I choose. And that,” said Mr. Mer- 
dle, now deeply intent upon a dust-cart 
that w r as passing the window's, “ shall 
be at your command whenever you think 
proper.” 

New acknowledgments from Mr. Dor- 
rit. New passages of Mr. Merdle’s 
hand over his forehead. Calm and si- 
lence. Contemplation of Mr. Dorrit’s 
waistcoat-buttons by Mr. Merdle. 

“ My time being rather precious,” 
said Mr. Merdle, suddenly getting up, 
as if he had been waiting in the interval 
for his legs, and they had just come, 
“ I must be moving towards the City. 
Can I take you anywhere, sir ? I shall 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


359 


be happy to set you down, or send you 
on. My carriage is at your disposal.” 

Mr. Dorrit bethought himself that he 
had business at his banker’s. His bank- 
er’s was in the City. That was for- 
tunate : Mr. Merdle would take him 
into the City. But surely he might not 
detain Mr. Merdle while he assumed 
his coat ? Yes, he might, and must ; 
Mr. Merdle insisted on it. So Mr. 
Dorrit, retiring into the next room, put 
himself under the hands of his valet, 
and in five minutes came back, glorious. 

Then said Mr. Merdle, “Allow me, 
sir. Take my arm ! ” Then, leaning 
on Mr. Merdle’s arm, did Mr. Dorrit 
descend the staircase, seeing the wor- 
shippers on the steps, and feeling that 
the light of Mr. Merdle shone by re- 
flection in himself. Then the carriage, 
and the ride into the City ; and the peo- 
ple who looked at them ; and the hats 
that flew off gray heads ; and the gen- 
eral bowing and crouching before this 
wonderful mortal, the like of which 
prostration of spirit was not to be seen, 
— no, by high Heaven, no ! It may be 
worth thinking of by Fawners of all de- 
nominations, — in Westminster Abbey 
and Saint Paul’s Cathedral put to- 
gether, on any Sunday in the year. 1 1 
was a rapturous dream to Mr. Dorrit, 
to find himself set aloft in this public 
car of triumph, making a magnificent 
progress to that befitting destination, 
the golden Street of the Lombards. 

There Mr. Merdle insisted on alight- 
ing and going his way afoot, and leav- 
ing his poor equipage at Mr. Dorrit’s 
disposition. So the dream increased 
in rapture when Mr. Dorrit came out 
of the bank alone, and people looked at 
him in default of Mr. Merdle, and 
when, with the ears of his mind, he 
heard the frequent exclamation as he 
rolled glibly along, “ A wonderful man 
to be Mr. Merdle’s friend ! ” 

At dinner that day, although the oc- 
casion was not foreseen and provided for, 
a brilliant company of such as are not 
made of the dust of the earth, but of 
some superior article for the present un- 
known, shed their lustrous benediction 
upon Mr. Dorrit’s daughter’s marriage. 
And Mr. Dorrit’s daughter that day be- 
gan, in earnest, her competition with 


that woman not present ; and began it 
so well, that Mr. Dorrit could all but 
have taken his affidavit, if required, that 
Mrs. Sparkler had all her life been lying 
at full length in the lap of luxury, and 
had never heard of such a rough word 
in the English tongue as Marshalsea. 

Next day, and the day after, and 
every day, all graced by more dinner- 
company, cards descended on Mr. Dor- ^ 
rit, like theatrical snow. As the friend 
and relative by marriage of the illustri- 
ous Merdle, Bar, Bishop, Treasury,' 
Chorus, Everybody wanted to make or 
improve Mr. Dorrit’s acquaintance. In 
Mr. Merdle’s heaps of offices in the 
City, when Mr. Dorrit appeared at any 
of them on his business taking him 
Eastward (which it frequently did, for 
it throve amazingly), the name of Dor- 
rit was always a passport to the great 
presence of Merdle. So the dream in- 
creased in rapture every hour, as Mr. 
Dorrit felt increasingly sensible that this 
connection had brought him forward in- 
deed. 

Only one thing sat otherwise than 
auriferousty, and at the same time light- 
ly, on Mr. Dorrit’s mind. It was the 
Chief Butler. That stupendous char- 
acter looked at him, in the course of his 
official looking at the dinners, in a man- 
ner that Mr. Dorrit considered ques- 
tionable. He looked at him, as he 
passed through the hall and up the 
staircase, going to dinner, with a glazed 
fixedness that Mr. Dorrit did not like. 
Seated at table in the act of drinking, 

Mr. Dorrit still saw him through Ins 
wineglass, regarding him with a cold 
and ghostly eye. It misgave him that 
the Chief Butler must have known a 
collegian, and must have seen him in 
the college, — perhaps had been pre- 
sented to him. He looked as closely at 
the Chief Butler as such a man could 
be looked at, and yet he did not recall 
that he had ever seen him elsewhere. 
Ultimately he was inclined to think that 
there was no reverence in the man, no 
sentiment in the great creature. But 
he was not relieved by that ; for, let him 
think what he would, the Chief Butler 
had him in his supercilious eye, even 
when that eye was on the plate and 
other table-garniture ; and he never let 


360 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


him out of it. To hint to him that this 
confinement in his eye was disagreeable, 
or to ask him what he meant, was an 
act too daring to venture upon ; his 
severity with his. employers and their 
visitors being terrific, and he never per- 
mitting himself to be approached with 
the slightest liberty. 


CHAPTER XVII. 

MISSING. 

The term of Mr. Dorrit’s visit was 
within two days of being out, and he 
was about to dress for another inspec- 
tion by the Chief Butler (whose victims 
were always dressed expressly for him), 
when one of the servants of the hotel 
presented himself, bearing a card. Mr. 
Dorrit, taking it, read, — 

“ Mrs. Finching.” 

The servant waited in speechless def- 
erence. 

“Man, man,” said Mr. Dorrit, turn- 
ing upon him with grievous indignation, 
“ explain your motive in bringing me 
this ridiculous name. T am wholly un- 
acquainted with it. Finching, sir?” 
said Mr. Dorrit, perhaps avenging him- 
self on the Chief Butler by Substitute. 
“ Ha ! What do you mean by Finch- 
ing?” 

The man, man, seemed to mean 
Flinching as much as anything else, for 
he backed away from Mr. Dorrit’s se- 
vere regard, as he replied, “A lady, 
sir.” 

“ I know no such lady, sir,” said Mr. 
Dorrit. “ Take this card away. I know 
no Finching of either sex.” 

“ Ask your pardon, sir. The lady 
said she was aware she might be un- 
known by name. But, she begged me 
to say, sir, that she had formerly the 
honor of being acquainted with Miss 
Dorrit. The lady said, sir, the young- 
est Miss Dorrit.” 

Mr. Dorrit knitted his brows, and re- 
joined, after a moment or two, “ Inform 
. Mrs. Finching, sir,” emphasizing the 
name as if the innocent man were solely 
responsible for it, “ that she can come 
up.” 


He had reflected, in his momentary 
pause, that unless she were admitted 
she might leave some message, or might 
say something below, having a disgrace- 
ful reference to that former state of ex- 
istence. Hence the concession, and 
hence the appearance of Flora, piloted 
in by the man, man. 

“ I have not the pleasure,” Said 
Mr. Dorrit, standing, with the card 
in his hand, and with an air which 
imported that it would scarcely have 
been a first-class pleasure if he had 
had it, “ of knowing either this name, 
or yourself, madam. Place a chair, 
sir.” 

The responsible man, with a start, 
obeyed, and went out on tiptoe. Flora, 
putting aside her veil with a bashful 
tremor upon her, proceeded to intro- 
duce herself. At the same time a sin- 
gular combination of perfumes was dif- 
fused through the room, as if some 
brandy had been put by mistake in a 
lavender-water bottle, or as if some 
lavender-water had been put by mis- 
take in a brandy bottle. 

“ I beg Mr. Dorrit to offer a thou- 
sand apologies and indeed they w r ould 
be far too few for such an intrusion 
which I know must appear extremely 
bold in a lady and alone too but I 
thought it best upon the whole how- 
ever difficult and even apparently im- 
proper though Mr. F.’s Aunt would 
have willingly accompanied me and 
as a character of great force and spirit 
would probably have struck one pos- 
sessed of such a knowledge of life as no 
doubt with so many changes must have 
been acquired, for Mr. F. himself said 
frequently that although w r ell educated 
in the neighborhood of Blackheath at 
as high as eighty guineas which is a 
good deal for parents and the plate 
kept back too on going aw'ay but that 
is more a meanness than its value that 
he had learnt more in his first year as 
a commercial traveller with a large com- 
mission on the sale of an article that 
nobody would hear of much less buy 
which preceded the wine trade a long 
time than in the w r hole six years in that 
academy conducted by a college Bache- 
lor, though w'hy a Bachelor more clev- 
er than a married man I do not see 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


361 


and never did but pray excuse me that 
is not the point.” 

Mr. Dorrit stood rooted to the car- 
pet, a statue of mystification. 

“ I must openly admit that I have no 
pretensions,” said Flora, “but having 
known the dear little thing which under 
altered circumstances appears a liberty 
but is not so intended and Goodness 
knows there was no favor in half a 
crown a day to such a needle as her- 
self but quite the other way and as to 
anything lowering in it far from it the 
laborer is worthy of his hire and I am 
sure I only wish he got it oftener and 
more animal food and less rheumatism 
in the back and legs poor soul.” 

“Madam,” said Mr. Dorrit, recover- 
ing his breath by a great effort, as the 
relict of the late Mr. Finching stopped 
to take hers, — “ madam,” said Mr. 
Dorrit, very red in the face, “ if I under- 
stand you to refer to — ha — to any- 
thing in the antecedents of — hum — a 
daughter of mine, involving — ha hum 
— daily compensation, madam, I beg 
to observe that the — ha — fact, assum- 
ing it — ha — to be fact, never was within 
my knowledge. Hum. I should not 
have permitted it. Ha. Never ! Nev- 
er!” 

“ Unnecessary to pursue the subject,” 
returned Flora, “ and would not have 
mentioned jt on any account except as 
supposing it a favorable and only let- 
ter of introduction but as to being fact 
no doubt whatever and you may set 
your mind at rest for the very dress I 
have on now can prove it and sweetly 
made though there is no denying that 
it would tell better on a better figure 
for my own is much too fat though how 
to bring it down I know not, pray ex- 
cuse me I am roving off again.” 

Mr. Dorrit backed to his chair in a 
stony way, and seated himself, as Flora 
gave him a softening look and played 
with her parasol. 

“The dear little thing,” said Flora 
“having gone off perfectly limp and 
white and cold in my own house or at 
least papa’s for though not a freehold 
still a long lease at a peppercorn on the 
morning when Arthur — foolish habit 
of our youthful days and Mr. Clennam 
far more adapted to existing circum- 


stances particularly addressing a stran- 
ger and that stranger a gentleman in 
an elevated station — communicated the 
glad tidings imparted by a person of 
the name of Pancks emboldens me.” 

At the mention of these two names, 
Mr. Dorrit frowned, stared, frowned 
again, hesitated with his fingers at his 
lips, as he had hesitated long ago, and 
said, “ Do me the favor to — ha — state 
your pleasure, madam.” 

“Mr. Dorrit,” said Flora, “you are 
very kind in giving me permission and 
highly natural it seems to me that you 
should be kind for though more stately 
I perceive a likeness filled out of course 
but a likeness still, the object of my 
intruding is my own without the slight- 
est consultation with any human being 
and most decidedly not with Arthur — 
pray excuse me Doyce and Clennam I 
don’t know what I am saying Mr. Clen- 
nam solus — for to put that individual 
linked by a golden chain to a purple 
time when all was ethereal out of any 
anxiety would be worth to me the ran- 
som of a monarch not that I have the 
least idea how much that would come 
to but using it as the total of all I have 
in the world and more.” 

Mr. Dorrit, without greatly regarding 
the earnestness of these latter words, re- 
peated, “ State your pleasure, madam.” 

“ It ’s not likely I well know,” said 
Flora, “ but it ’s possible and being pos- 
sible when I had the gratification of 
reading in the papers that you had ar- 
rived from Italy and were going back 
I made up my mind to try it for you 
might come across him or hear some- 
thing of him and if so what a blessing 
and relief to all ! ” 

“Allow me to ask, madam,” said 
Mr. Dorrit, with his ideas in wild con- 
fusion, “to whom — ha — to whom,” 
he repeated it with a raised voice in 
mere desperation, “you at present al- 
lude ? ” 

“ To the foreigner from Italy who dis- 
appeared in the City as no doubt you 
have read in the papers equally with 
myself,” said Flora, “not referring to 
private sources by the name of Pancks 
from which one gathers what dreadful- 
ly ill-natured things some people are 
wicked enough to whisper most likely 


3^2 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


judging others by themselves and what 
the uneasiness and indignation of Ar- 
thur — quite unable to overcome it 
Doyce and Clennam — cannot fail to 
be.” 

It happened, fortunately for the eluci- 
dation of any intelligible result, that Mr. 
Dorrit had heard or read nothing about 
the matter. This caused Mrs. Fincli- 
ing, with many apologies for being in 
great practical difficulties as to finding 
the way to her pocket among the stripes 
of her dress, at length to produce a po- 
lice handbill, setting forth that a foreign 
gentleman of the name of Blandois, last 
from Venice, had unaccountably disap- 
peared on such a night in such a part of 
the city of London ; that he was known 
to have entered such a house at such 
an hour ; that he was stated by the in- 
mates of that house to have left it, 
about so many minutes before mid- 
night ; and that he had never been be- 
held since. This, with exact particu- 
lars of time and locality, and with a good 
detailed description of the foreign gen- 
tleman who had so mysteriously van- 
ished, Mr. Dorrit read at large. 

“ Blandois ! ” said Mr. Dorrit. “ Ven- 
ice ! And this description ! I know 
this gentleman. He has been in my 
house. He is intimately acquainted with 
a gentleman of good family (but in indif- 
ferent circumstances), of whom I am a 
— hum — patron.” 

“ Then my humble and pressing en- 
treaty is the more,” said Flora, “that in 
travelling back you will have the kind- 
ness to look for this foreign gentleman 
along all the roads and up and down all 
the turnings and to make inquiries for 
him at all the hotels and orange-trees 
and vineyards and volcanoes and places 
for he must be somewhere and why 
does n’t he come forward and say he ’s 
there and clear all parties up?” 

“ Pray, madam,” said Mr. Dorrit, re- 
ferring to the handbill again, “who is 
Clennam and Co. ? Ha. I see the 
name mentioned here, in connection 
with the occupation of the house which 
Monsieur Blandois was seen to enter: 
who is Clennam and Co. ? Is it the 
individual of whom I had formerly — 
hum — some — ha — slight transitory 
knowledge, and to whom I believe you 


have referred? Is it — ha — that per- 
son ? » 

“ It ’s a very different person indeed,” 
replied Flora, “with no limbs and 
wheels instead and the grimmest of 
women though his mother.” 

“ Clennam and Co. a — hum — a 
mother ! ” exclaimed Mr. Dorrit. 

“And an old man besides,” said 
Flora. 

Mr. Dorrit looked as if he must im- 
mediately be driven out of his mind by 
this account. Neither was it rendered 
more favorable to sanity by Flora’s 
dashing into a rapid analysis of Mr. 
Flintwinch’s cravat, and describing 
him, without the lightest boundary line 
of separation between his identity and 
Mrs. Clennam’s, as a rusty screw in 
gaiters. Which compound of man and 
woman, no limbs, wheels, rusty screw, 
grimness, and gaiters so completely stu- 
pefied Mr. Dorrit, that he was a specta- 
cle to be pitied. 

“ But I would not detain you one mo- 
ment longer,” said Flora, upon whom 
his condition wrought its effect, though 
she was quite unconscious of having pro- 
duced it, “ if you would have the good- 
ness to give me your promise as a gen- 
tleman that both in going back to Italy 
and in Italy too you would look for this 
Mr. Blandois high and low and if you 
found or heard of him, make him come 
forward for the clearing of all parties.” 

By that time Mr. Dorrit had so far re- 
covered from his bewilderment as to be 
able to say, in a tolerably connected man- 
ner, that he should consider that his 
duty. Flora was delighted with her 
success, and rose to take her leave. 

“With a million thanks,” said she, 
“ and my address upon my card in case 
of anything to be communicated per- 
sonally, I will not send my love to the 
dear little thing for it might y not be ac- 
ceptable and indeed there is no dear 
little thing left in the transformation so 
why do it but both myself and Mr. F.’ s 
Aunt ever wish her well and lay no 
claim to any favor on our side you may 
be sure of that but quite the other way 
for what she undertook to do she did 
and that is more than a great many of 
us do, not to say anything of her doing 
it as well as it could be done and I my- 


LITTLE 

self am one of them for I have said 
ever since I began to recover the blow 
of Mr. F.’ s death that I would learn the 
Organ of which I am extremely fond 
but of which I am ashamed to say I do 
not yet know a note, good evening ! ” 

When Mr. Dorrit, who attended her 
to the room door, had had a little time 
to collect his senses, he found that the 
interview had summoned back discard- 
ed reminiscences which jarred with the 
Merdle dinner-table. He wrote and 
sent off a brief note excusing himself 
for that day, and ordered dinner pres- 
ently in his own rooms at the hotel. 
He had another reason for this. His 
time in London was very nearly out, 
and was anticipated by engagements ; 
his plans were made for returning ; and 
he thought it behooved his importance 
to pursue some direct inquiry into the 
Blandois disappearance, and be in a 
condition to carry back to Mr. Henry 
Gowan the result of his own personal 
investigation. He therefore resolved 
that he would take advantage of that 
evening’s freedom to go down to Clen- 
nam and Co.’s, easily to be found by 
the direction set forth in the handbill ; 
and see the place, and ask a question 
or two there, himself. 

Having dined as plainly as the estab- 
lishment and the Courier would let him, 
and having taken a short sleep by the 
fire for his better recovery from Mrs. 
Finching, he set out in a hackney 
cabriolet alone. The deep bell of St. 
Paul’s was striking nine as he passed 
under the shadow of Temple Bar, head- 
less and forlorn in these degenerate 
days. 

As he approached his destination 
through the by-streets and waterside 
ways, that part of London seemed to 
him an uglier spot at such an hour than 
he had ever supposed it to be. Many 
long years had passed since he had seen 
it : he had never known much of it ; and 
it wore a mysterious and dismal aspect 
in his eyes. So powerfully was his 
imagination impressed by it, that when 
his driver stopped, after having asked 
the way more than once, and said to the 
best of his belief this was the gateway 
they wanted, Mr. Dorrit stood hesitat- 
ing, with the coach door in his hand, 


DORRIT. 363 

half afraid of the dark look of the 
place. 

Truly, it looked as gloomy that night, 
as even it had ever looked. Two of the 
handbills were posted on the entrance 
wall, one on either side, and as the lamp 
flickered in the night air, shadows 
passed over them, not unlike the shad- 
ows of fingers following the lines. A 
watch was evidently kept upon the 
place. As Mr. Dorrit paused, a man 
passed in from over the way, and anoth- 
er man passed out from some dark cor- 
ner within ; and both looked at him in 
passing, and both remained standing 
about. 

As there was only one house in the 
enclosure, there was no room for uncer- 
tainty, so he went up the steps of that 
house and knocked. There was a dim 
light in two windows on the first floor. 
The door gave back a dreary, vacant 
sound, as though the house were emp- 
ty ; but it was not, for a light was visi- 
ble, and a step was audible, almost 
directly. They both came to the door, 
and a chain grated, and a woman with 
her apron thrown over her face and head 
stood in the aperture. 

“ Who is it ? ” said the woman. 

Mr. Dorrit, much amazed by this 
appearance, replied that he was from 
Italy, and that he wished to ask a 
question relative to the missing person, 
whom he knew. 

“ Hi 1 ” cried the woman, raising a 
cracked voice. “Jeremiah!” 

Upon this, a dry old man appeared, 
whom Mr. Dorrit thought he identified 
by his gaiters as the rusty screw. The 
woman was under apprehensions of the 
dry old man, for she whisked her apron 
away as he approached, and disclosed a 
pale affrighted face. “Open the door, 
you fool,” said the old man ; “and let 
the gentleman in.” 

Mr. Dorrit, not without a glance over 
his shoulder towards his driver and the 
cabriolet, walked into the dim hall. 
“ Now, sir,” said Mr. Flintwinch, “you 
can ask anything here you think prop- 
er; there are no secrets here, sir.” 

Before a reply could be made, a 
strong stern voice, though a woman’s, 
called from above, “Who is it? ” 

“Who is it?” returned Jeremiah. 


364 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


“More inquiries. A gentleman from 
Italy.” 

“ Bring him up here ! ” 

Mr. Flintwinch muttered, as if he 
deemed that unnecessary ; but, turning 
to Mr. Dorrit, said, “ Mrs. Clennam. 
She will do as she likes. I ’ll show 
you the way.” He then preceded Mr. 
Dorrit up the blackened staircase ; that 
gentleman, not unnaturally looking be- 
hind him on the road, saw the woman 
following, with her apron thrown over 
her head again in her former ghastly 
manner. 

Mrs. Clennam had her books open 
on her little table. “ Oh ! ” said she 
abruptly, as she eyed her visitor with a 
steady look. “You are from Italy, 
sir, are you. Well?” 

Mr. Dorrit was at a loss for any more 
distinct rejoinder at the moment than 
“Ha — well?” 

“ Where is this missing man ? Have 
you come to give us information where 
he is ? I hope you have ? ” 

“ So far from it, I — hum — have 
come to seek information.” 

“ Unfortunately for us, there is none 
to be got here. Flintwinch, show the 
gentleman the handbill. Give him 
several to take away. Hold the light 
for him to read it.” 

Mr. Flintwinch did as he was directed, 
and Mr. Dorrit read it through, as if 
he had not previously seen it ; glad 
enough of the opportunity of collecting 
his presence of mind, which the air of 
the house and of the people in it had a 
little disturbed. While his eyes were on 
the paper, he felt that the eyes of Mr. 
Flintwinch and of Mrs. Clennam were 
on him. He found when he looked up 
that this sensation was not a fanciful one. 

“ Now, you know as much,” said 
Mrs. Clennam, “ as we know, sir. Is 
Mr. Blandois a friend of yours ? ” 

“No — a — hum — an acquaintance,” 
answered Mr. Dorrit. 

“ You have no commission from him, 
perhaps ? ” 

“I? Ha. Certainly not.” 

The searching look turned gradually 
to the floor, after taking Mr. Flint- 
winch’s face in its way. Mr. Dorrit, 
discomfited by finding that he was the 
questioned instead of the questioner, 


applied himself to the reversal of that 
unexpected order of things. 

“ I am — ha — a gentleman of prop- 
erty, at present residing in Italy with 
my family, my servants, and — hum — 
my rather large establishment. Being 
in London for a short time on affairs 
connected with — ha — my estate, and 
hearing of this strange disappearance, 
I wished to make myself acquainted 
with the circumstances at first hand, 
because there is — ha hum — an Eng- 
lish gentleman in Italy whom I shall no 
doubt see on my return, who has been 
in habits of close and daily intimacy 
with Monsieur Blandois. Mr. Henry 
Gowan. You may know the name.” 

“ Never heard of it.” 

Mrs. Clennam said it, and Mr. Flint- 
winch echoed it. 

“ Wishing to — ha — make the nar- 
rative coherent and consecutive to 
him,” said Mr. Dorrit, “may I ask, — 
say three questions ? ” 

“ Thirty, if you choose.” 

“ Have you known Monsieur Blandois 
long? ” 

“Not a twelvemonth. Mr. Flint- 
winch here will refer to the books and 
tell you when, and by whom at Paris, 
he was introduced to us. If that,” 
Mrs. Clennam added, “ should be any 
satisfaction to you. It is poor satisfac- 
tion to us.” 

“ Have you seen him often? ” 

“No. Twice. Once before, and — ” 

“That once,” suggested Mr. Flint- 
winch. 

“ And that once.” 

“ Pray, madam,” said Mr. Dorrit, 
with a growing fancy upon him, as he 
recovered his importance, that he was 
in some superior way in the Commis- 
sion of the Peace, — “ pray, madam, 
may I inquire, for the greater satis- 
faction of the gentleman whom I have 
the honor to — ha — retain, or protect, 
or let me say to — hum — know — to 
know — Was Monsieur Blandois here 
on business, on the night indicated in 
this printed sheet?” 

“ On what he called business,” re- 
turned Mrs. Clennam. 

“ Is — ha — excuse me — is its nature 
to be communicated ? ” 

“No.” 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


365 


It was evidently impracticable to pass 
the barrier of that reply. 

“ The question has been asked be- 
fore,” said Mrs. Clennam, “ and the 
answer has been, No. We don’t choose 
to publish our transactions, however un- 
important, to all the town. We say, No.” 

“ I mean, he took away no money 
with him, for example?” ‘said Mr. 
Dorrit. 

“ He took away none of ours, sir, 
and got none here.” 

“ I suppose,” observed Mr. Dorrit, 
glancing from Mrs. Clennam to Mr. 
Flintwinch, and from Mr. Flintwinch to 
Mrs. Clennam, “you have no way of ac- 
counting to yourself for this mystery ? ” 

“ Why do you suppose so ? ” rejoined 
Mrs. Clennam. 

Disconcerted by the cold and hard 
inquiry, Mr. Dorrit was unable to as- 
sign any reason for his supposing so. 

“ I account for it, sir,” she pursued 
after an awkward silence on Mr. Dor- 
rit’s part, “ by having no doubt that he 
is travelling somewhere, or hiding 
somewhere.” 

“ Do you know — ha — why he should 
hide anywhere? ” 

“No.” 

It was exactly the same No as before, 
and put another barrier up. 

“You asked me if I accounted for 
the disappearance to myself,” Mrs. 
Clennam sternly reminded him, “not 
if I accounted for it to you. I do not 
pretend to account for it to you, sir. I 
understand it to be no more my busi- 
ness to do that, than it is yours to re- 
quire that.” 

Mr. Dorrit answered with an apolo- 
getic bend of his head. As he stepped 
back, preparatory to saying he had no 
more to ask, he could not but observe 
how gloomily and fixedly she sat with her 
eyes fastened on the ground, and a cer- 
tain air upon her of resolute waiting; 
also, how exactly the selfsame expression 
was reflected in Mr. Flintwinch, stand- 
ing at a little distance from her chair, 
with his eyes also on the ground, and 
his right hand softly rubbing his chin. 

At that moment, Mistress AfTery (of 
course, the woman with the apron') 
dropped the candlestick she held, and 
cried out, “ There ! O good Lord ! 


there it is again. Hark, Jeremiah 1 
Now ! ” 

If there were any sound at all, it was 
so slight that she must have fallen into 
a confirmed habit of listening for sounds ; 
but Mr. Dorrit believed he did hear a 
something, like the falling of dry leaves. 
The woman’s terror, for a very short 
space, seemed to touch the three ; and 
they all listened. 

Mr. Flintwinch was the first to stir. 
“AfTery, my woman,” said he, sidling 
at her with his fists clenched, and his 
elbows quivering with impatience to 
shake her, “ you are at your old tricks. 
You’ll be walking in your sleep next, 
my woman, and playing the whole 
round of your distempered antics. You 
must have some physic. When I have 
shown this gentleman out, I ’ll make 
you up such a comfortable dose, my 
woman, — such a comfortable dose ! ” 

It did not appear altogether comfort- 
able in expectation to Mistress Affery ; 
but Jeremiah, without further reference 
to his healing medicine, took another 
candle from Mrs. Clennam’s table, and 
said, “Now, sir; shall I light you 
down ? ” 

Mr. Dorrit professed himself obliged, 
and went down. Mr. Flintwinch shut 
him out and chained him out, without 
a moment’s loss of time. He was again 
passed by the two men, one going out 
and the other coming in ; got into the 
vehicle he had left waiting, and was 
driven away. 

Before he had gone far, the driver 
stopped to let him know that he had 
given his name, number, and address 
to the two men, on their joint requisi- 
tion : and also the address at which he 
had taken Mr. Dorrit up, the hour at 
which he had been called from his stand, 
and the way by which he had come. 
This did not make the night’s adventure 
run the less hotly in Mr. Dorrit’s mind, 
either when he sat down by his fire 
again, or when he went to bed. All 
night he haunted the dismal house, saw 
the two people resolutely waiting, heard 
the woman with her apron over her face 
cry out about the noise, and found the 
body of the missing Blandois, now bur- 
ied in a cellar and now bricked up in a 
wall. 


366 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

A CASTLE IN THE AIR. 

Manifold are the cares of wealth 
and state. Mr. Dorrit’s satisfaction in 
remembering that it had not been neces- 
sary for him to announce himself to 
Clennam and Co. or to make an allusion 
to his having ever had any knowledge 
of the intrusive person of that name, 
had been damped overnight, while it 
was still fresh, by a debate that arose 
within him whether or no he should 
take the Marshalsea in his way back, 
and look at the old gate. He had de- 
cided not to do so ; and had astonished 
the coachman by being very fierce with 
him for proposing to go over London 
Bridge and recross the river by Water- 
loo Bridge, — a course which would 
have taken him almost within sight of 
his old quarters. . Still, for all that, the 
question had raised a conflict in his 
breast ; and, for some odd reason or 
no reason, he was vaguely dissatisfied. 
Even at the Merdle dinner-table next 
day, he was so out of sorts about it, that 
he continued at intervals to turn it over 
and over, in a manner frightfully incon- 
sistent with the good society surround- 
ing him. It made him hot to think 
what the Chief Butler’s opinion of him 
would have been, if that illustrious per- 
sonage could have plumbed with that 
heavy eye of his the stream of his med- 
itations. 

The farewell banquet was of a gor- 
geous nature, and wound up his visit in 
a most brilliant manner. Fanny com- 
bined with the attractions of her youth 
and beauty a certain weight of self- 
sustainment, as if she had been married 
twenty years. He felt that he could 
leave her with a cpiiet rnind to tread the 
paths of distinction, and wished — but 
without abatement of patronage, and 
without prejudice to the retiring virtues 
of his favorite child — that he had such 
another daughter. 

“My dear,” he told her at parting, 
“ our family looks to you to — ha — as- 
sert its dignity and — hum — maintain 
its importance. I know you will never 
disappoint it.” 

“No, papa,” said Fanny, “you may 


rely upon that, I think. My best love 
to dearest Amy, and I will write to her 
very soon.” 

“Shall I convey any message to — 
ha— -anybody else?” asked Mr. Dor- 
rit, in an insinuating manner. 

“Papa,” said Fanny, before whom 
Mrs. General instantly loomed, “ no, 
I thank you. You are very kind, pa, 
but I must beg to be excused. There 
is no other message to send, I thank 
you, dear papa, that it would be at all 
agreeable to you to take.” 

They parted in an outer drawing-room, 
where only Mr. Sparkler waited on his 
lady, and dutifully bided his time for 
shaking hands. When Mr. Sparkler 
was admitted to this closing audience, 
Mr. Merdle came creeping m with not 
much more appearance of arms in his 
sleeves than if he had been the twin 
brother of Miss Biffin, and insisted on 
escorting Mr. Dorrit down stairs. All 
Mr. Dorrit’s protestations being in vain, 
he enjoyed the honor of being accompa- 
nied to the hall door by this distin- 
guished man, who (as Mr. Dorrit told 
him in shaking hands on the step) had 
really overwhelmed him with attentions 
and services, during this memorable 
visit. _ Thus they parted; Mr. Dorrit 
entering his carriage with a swelling 
breast, not at all sorry that his Courier, 
who had come to take leave in the low- 
er regions, should have an opportunity 
of beholding the grandeur of his de- 
parture. 

The aforesaid grandeur -was yet full 
upon Mr. Dorrit when he alighted at 
his hotel. Helped out by the Courier 
and some half-dozen of the hotel ser- 
vants, he was passing through the hall 
with a serene magnificence, when lo ! 
a sight presented itself that struck him 
dumb and motionless. John Chivery, 
in his best clothes, with his tall hat 
under his arm, his ivory-handled cane 
genteelly embarrassing his deportment, 
and a bundle of cigars in his hand ! 

“Now, young man,” said the por- 
ter. “ This is the gentleman. This 
young man has persisted in waiting, 
sir, saying you would be glad to see 
him.” 

Mr. Dorrit glared on the young man, 
choked, and said, in the mildest of tones, 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


367 


“Ah! Young John ! It is Young John, 
I think ; is it not ? ” 

“ Yes, sir,” returned Young John. 

“I — ha — thought it was Young 
John !” said Mr. Dorrit. “ The young 
man may come up,” turning to the at- 
tendants, as he passed on : “ O yes, he 
may come up. Let Young John follow. 
I will speak to him above.” 

Young John followed, smiling and 
much gratified. Mr. Dorrit’s rooms 
were reached. Candles were lighted. 
The attendants withdrew. 

“Now, sir,” said Mr. Dorrit, turning 
round upon him and seizing him by the 
collar when they were safely alone, 
“ what do you mean by this? ” 

The amazement and horror depicted 
in the unfortunate John’s face — for he 
had rather expected to be embraced 
next — were of that powerfully expres- 
sive nature, that Mr. Dorrit withdrew 
his hand and merely glared at him. 

“ How dare you do this? ” said Mr. 
Dorrit. “ How do you presume to 
come here? How dare you insult 
me ? ” 

“ I insult you, sir ? ” cried Young 
John. “ Oh ! ” 

“Yes, sir,” returned Mr. Dorrit. 
“Insult me. Your coming here is an 
affront, an impertinence, an audacity. 
You are not wanted here. Who sent 
you here? What — ha — the devil do 
you do here ? ” 

“ I thought, sir,” said Young John, 
with as pale and shocked a face as ever 
had been turned to Mr. Dorrit’s in his 
life, — even in his college life, — “I 
thought, sir, you mightn’t object to 
have the goodness to accept a bun- 
dle — ” 

“ Damn your bundle, sir ! ” cried Mr. 
Dorrit in irrepressible rage. “ I — hum 
— don’t smoke.” 

“ I humbly beg your pardon, sir. 
Y r ou used to.” 

“Tell me that again,” cried Mr. 
Dorrit, quite beside himself, “ and I ’ll 
take the poker to }'ou ! ” 

John Chivery backed to the door. 

“ Stop, sir ! ” cried Mr. Dorrit. 
“ Stop ! Sit down. Confound you, sit 
down ! ” 

John Chivery dropped into the chair 
nearest the door, and Mr. Dorrit walked 


up and down the room ; rapidly at first; 
then, more slowly. Once, he went to the 
window, and stood there with his fore- 
head against the glass. All of a sudden, 
he turned and said, — 

“ What else did you come for, sir?” 

“ Nothing else in the world, sir. O 
dear me ! Only to say, sir, that I 
hoped you was well, and only to ask if 
Miss Amy was well ? ” 

“What’s that to you, sir?” retorted 
Mr. Dorrit. 

“It’s nothing to me, sir, by rights. 
I never thought of lessening the dis- 
tance betwixt us, I am sure. I know 
it ’s a liberty, sir, but I never thought 
you ’d have taken it ill. Upon my word 
and honor, sir,” said Young John, with 
emotion, “in my poor way, I am too 
proud to have come, I assure you, if I 
had thought so.” 

Mr. Dorrit was ashamed. He went 
back to the window, and leaned his fore- 
head against the glass for some time. 
When he turned, he had his handker- 
chief in his hand, and he had been wip- 
ing his eyes with it, and he looked tii'ed 
and ill. 

“Young John, I am very sorry to 
have been hasty with you, but — ha — 
some remembrances are not happy re- 
membrances, and — hum — you should 
n’t have come.” 

“ I feel that now, sir,” returned John 
Chivery; “but I didn’t before, and 
Heaven knows I meant no harm, sir.” 

“No. No,” said Mr. Dorrit. “I 
am — hum — sure of that. Ha. Give 
me your hand, Young John, give me 
your hand.” 

Young John gave it ; but Mr. Dorrit 
had driven his heart out of it, and noth- 
ing could change his face now, from its 
white, shocked look. 

“ There ! ” said Mr. Dorrit, slowly 
shaking hands with him. “ Sit down 
again, Young John.” 

“Thank you, sir — but I’d rather 
stand.” 

Mr. Dorrit sat down instead. After 
painfully holding his head a little while, 
he turned it to his visitor, and said, with 
an effort to be easy, — 

“ And how is your father, Young 
John? How — hi — how are they all, 
Young John? ” 


363 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


“ Thank you, sir. They ’re all pretty 
well, sir. They ’re not any ways com- 
plaining.” 

“ Hum. You are in your — ha — old 
business I see, John?” said Mr. Dor- 
rit, with a glance at the offending bun- 
dle he had anathematized. 

“ Partly, sir. I am in my,” John 
hesitated a little, “ father’s business 
likewise.” 

“ O, indeed ! ” said Mr. Dorrit. “Do 
you — ha hum — go upon the — ha — ” 

“ Lock, sir? Yes, sir.” 

“ Much to do, John ? ” 

“Yes, sir; we’re pretty heavy at 
present. I don’t know how it is, but we 
generally are pretty heavy.” 

“ At this time of the year, Young 
John?” 

“ Mostly at all times of the year, sir. 
I don’t know the time that makes much 
difference to us. I wish you good night, 
sir.” 

“Stay a moment, John — ha — stay 
a moment. Hum. Leave me the ci- 
gars, John, I — ha — beg.” 

Certainly, sir.” John put them, 
with a trembling hand, on the table. 

“ Stay a moment, Young John ; stay 
another moment. It would be a — ha 

— a gratification to me to send a little 

— hum — Testimonial, by such a trusty 
messenger, to be divided among — ha 
hum — them — them — according to 
their wants. Would you object to take 
it, John?” 

“Not in any ways, sir. There ’s 
many of them, I ’m sure, that would be 
the better for it.” 

“Thank you, John. I — ha — I’ll 
write it, John.” 

His hand shook so that he was a long 
time writing it, and wrote it in a tremu- 
lous scrawl at last. It was a check for 
one hundred pounds. He folded it 
up, put it in Young John’s hand, and 
pressed the hand in his. 

“I hope you’ll — ha — overlook — 
hum — what has passed, John.” 

“ Don’t speak of it, sir, on any ac- 
counts. I don’t in any ways bear mal- 
ice, I ’m sure.” 

But nothing while John was there 
could change John’s face to its natural 
color and expression, or restore John’s 
natural manner. 


“ And, John,” said Mr. Dorrit, giv- 
ing his hand a final pressure, and re- 
leasing it, -“I hope we — ha — agree 
that we have spoken together in confi- 
dence ; and that you will abstain, in go- 
ing out, from saying anything to any 
one that might — hum — suggest that 
— ha — once I — ” 

“ O, I assure you, sir,” returned John 
Chivery, “ in my poor humble way, 
sir, I ’m too proud and honorable to 
do it, sir.” 

Mr. Dorrit was not too proud and 
honorable to listen at the door, that he 
might ascertain for himself whether 
John really went straight out, or lin- 
gered to have any talk with any one. 
There was no doubt that he went direct 
out at the door, and away down the 
street with a quick step. After remain- 
ing alone for an hour, Mr. Dorrit rang 
for the Courier, who found him with his 
chair on the hearth-rug, sitting with his 
back towards him and his face to the fire. 
“ You can take that bundle of cigars to 
smoke on the journey, if you like,” said 
Mr. Dorrit, with a careless wave of his 
hand. “ Ha — brought by — hum — lit- 
tle offering from — ha — son of old ten- 
ant of mine.” 

Next morning’s sun saw Mr. Dorrit’s 
equipage upon the Dover road, where 
every red-jacketed postilion w^as the 
sign of a cruel house, established for 
the unmerciful plundering of travellers. 
The whole business of the human race, 
between London and Dover, being 
spoliation, Mr. Dorrit was waylaid at 
Dartford, pillaged at Gravesend, rifled 
at Rochester, fleeced at Sittingboume, 
and sacked at Canterbury. However, 
it being the Courier’s business to get 
him out of the hands of the banditti, the 
Courier bought him off at every sta^e ; 
and so the red-jackets went gleaming 
merrily along the spring landscape, ris- 
ing and falling to a regular measure, 
between Mr. Dorrit in his snug corner, 
and the next chalky rise in the dusty 
highway. 

Another day’s sun saw him at Calais. 
And having now got the Channel be- 
tween himself and John Chivery, he 
began to feel safe, and to find that the 
foreign air was lighter to breathe than 
the air of England. 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


369 


On again by the heavy French roads 
for Paris. Having now quite recovered 
his equanimity, Mr. Dorrit, in his snug 
corner, fell to castle-building as he rode 
along. It was evident that he had a 
very large castle in hand. All day long 
he was running towers up, taking tow- 
ers down, adding a wing here, putting 
on a battlement there, looking to the 
walls, strengthening the defences, giv- 
ing ornamental touches to the interior, 
making in all respects a superb castle 
of it. His preoccupied face so clearly 
denoted the pursuit in which he was 
engaged, that every cripple at the post- 
houses, not blind, who shoved his little 
battered tin-box in at the carriage win- 
dow for Charity in the name of Heaven, 
Charity in the name of our Lady, Char- 
ity in the name of all the Saints, knew 
as well what work he was at, as their 
countryman Le Brun could have known 
it himself, though he had made that 
English traveller the subject of a spe- 
cial physiognomical treatise. 

Arrived at Paris, and resting there 
three days, Mr. Dorrit strolled much 
about the streets alone, looking in at the 
shop windows, and particularly the jew- 
ellers’ windows. Ultimately, he went 
into the most famous jeweller’s, and 
said he wanted to buy a little gift for a 
lady. 

It was a charming little woman to 
whom he said it, — a sprightly little wo- 
man, dressed in perfect taste, who came 
out of a green velvet bovver to attend 
upon him, from posting up some dainty 
little books of account which one could 
hardly suppose to be ruled for the entry 
of any articles more commercial than 
kisses, at a dainty little shining desk 
which looked in itself like a sweet- 
meat. 

For example, then, said the little 
woman, what species of gift did Mon- 
sieur desire ? A love-gift ? 

Mr. Dorrit smiled, and said, Eh, 
well ! Perhaps. What did he know? 
It was always possible, the sex being 
so charming. Would she show him 
some ? 

Most willingly, said the little woman. 
Flattered and enchanted to show him 
many. But pardon ! To begin with, 
he would have the great goodness to 

24 


observe that there were love-gifts, and 
there were nuptial gifts. For example, 
these ravishing ear-rings and this neck- 
lace so superb to correspond, were what 
one called a love-gift. These brooches 
and these rings, of a beauty so gracious 
and celestial, were what one called, 
with the permission of Monsieur, nup- 
tial gifts. 

Perhaps it would be a good arrange- 
ment, Mr. Dorrit hinted, smiling, to 
purchase both, and to present the love- 
gift first, and to finish with the nuptial 
offering ? 

Ah Heaven ! said the little woman, 
laying the tips of the fingers of her two 
little hands against each other, that 
would be generous indeed, that would 
be a special gallantry ! And without 
doubt the lady so crushed with gifts 
would find them irresistible. 

Mr. Dorrit was not sure of that. 
But, for example, the sprightly little 
woman was very sure of it, she said. 
So Mr. Dorrit bought a gift of each 
sort, and paid handsomely for it. As 
he strolled back to his hotel afterwards, 
he carried his head high ; having plain- 
ly got up his castle, now, to a much 
loftier altitude than the two square tow- 
ers of Notre Dame. 

Building away with all his might, but 
reserving the plans of his castle exclu- 
sively for his own eye, Mr. Dorrit post- 
ed away for Marseilles. Building on, 
building on, busily, busily, from morn- 
ing to night. Falling asleep, and leav- 
ing great blocks of building material 
dangling in the air; waking again, to 
resume work and get them into their 
places. What time the Courier in the 
rumble, smoking Young John’s best 
cigars, left a little thread of thin light 
smoke behind, — perhaps as he built a 
castle or two, with stray pieces of Mr. 
Dorrit’s money. 

Not a fortified town that they passed 
in all their journey was as strong, not a 
cathedral summit was as high, as Mr. 
Dorrit’s castle. Neither the Saone 
nor the Rhone sped with the swiftness 
of that peerless building ; nor was the 
Mediterranean deeper than its founda- 
tions ; nor were the distant landscapes 
on the Cornice road, nor the hills and 
bay of Genoa the Superb, more beauti- 


37 ° 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


ful. Mr. Dorrit and his matchless cas- 
tle were disembarked among the dirty 
white houses and dirtier felons of Civita 
Vecchia, and thence scrambled on to 
Rome as they could, through the filth 
that festered on the way. 


CHAPTER XIX. 

THE STORMING OF THE CASTLE IN 
THE AIR. 

The sun had gone down full four 
hours, and it was later than most trav- 
ellers would like it to be for finding 
themselves outside the walls of Rome, 
when Mr. Dorrit’s carriage, still on its 
last wearisome stage, rattled over the 
solitary Campagna. The savage herds- 
men, and the fierce-looking peasants, 
who had checkered the way while the 
light lasted, had all gone down with the 
sun, and left the wilderness blank. At 
some turns of the road, a pale flare on 
the horizon, like an exhalation from the 
ruin-sown land, showed that the city 
was yet far off ; but this poor relief was 
rare and short-lived. The carriage 
dipped down again into a hollow of the 
black dry sea, and for a long time there 
was nothing visible save its petrified 
swell and the gloomy sky. 

Mr. Dorrit, though he had his castle- 
building to engage his mind, could not 
be quite easy in that desolate place. 
He was far more curious, in every 
swerve of the carriage, and every cry of 
the postilions, than he had beeh since 
he quitted London. The valet on the 
box evidently quaked. The Courier in 
the rumble was not altogether comforta- 
ble in his mind. As often as Mr. Dor- 
rit let down the glass, and looked back 
at him (which was very often), he saw 
him smoking John Chivery out, it is 
true, but still generally standing up the 
while and looking about him, like a man 
who had his suspicions, and kept upon 
his guard. Then wotild Mr. Dorrit, 
pulling up the glass again, .reflect that 
those postilions were cutthroat looking 
fellows, and that he would have done 
better to have slept at Civita Vecchia, 
and have started betimes in the morn- 


ing. But, for all this, he worked at his 
castle in the intervals. 

And now, fragments of ruinous en- 
closure, yawning window-gap and crazy 
wall, deserted houses, leaking wells, 
broken water-tanks, spectral cypress- 
trees, patches of tangled vine, and the 
changing of the track to a long, irregu- 
lar, disordered lane, where everything 
was crumbling away, from the unsightly 
buildings to the jolting road, — now, 
these objects showed that they were 
nearing Rome. And now, a sudden 
twist and stoppage of the carriage in- 
spired Mr. Dorrit with the mistrust that 
the brigand moment was come for twist- 
ing him into a ditch and robbing him ; 
until, letting down the glass again and 
looking out, he perceived himself as- 
sailed by nothing worse than a funeral 
procession, which came mechanically 
chanting by, with an indistinct show 
of dirty vestments, lurid torches, swing- 
ing censers, and a great cross borne be- 
fore a priest. He was an ugly priest by 
torchlight, — of a lowering aspect, with 
an overhanging brow, — and as his eyes 
met those of Mr. Dorrit, looking bare- 
headed out of the carriage, his lips, 
moving as they chanted, seemed to 
threaten that important traveller ; like- 
wise the action of his hand, which was 
in fact his manner of returning the trav- 
eller’s salutation, seemed to come in aid 
of that menace. So thought Mr. Dor- 
rit, made fanciful by the weariness of 
building and travelling, as the priest 
drifted past him, and the procession 
straggled away, taking its dead along with 
it. Upon their so-different way went Mr. 
Dorrit’s company too ; and soon, with 
their coach-load of luxuries from the 
two great capitals of Europe, they were 
(like the Goths reversed) beating at the 
gates of Rome. 

Mr. Dorrit was not expected by his 
own people that night. He had been ; 
but they had given him up until to-mor- 
row, not doubting that it was later than 
he would care, in those parts, to be out. 
Thus, when his equipage stopped at his 
own gate, no one but the porter ap- 
peared to receive him. Was Miss Dor- 
rit from home? he asked. No. She 
was within. Good, said Mr. Dorrit to 
the assembling servants ; let them keep 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


37i 


where they were ; let them help to un- 
load the carriage ; he would find Miss 
Dorrit for himself. 

So he went up his grand staircase, 
slowly and tired, and looked into vari- 
ous chambers which were empty, until 
he saw a light in a small anteroom. It 
was a curtained nook, like a tent, with- 
in two other rooms ; and it looked 
warm, and bright in color, as he ap- 
proached it through the dark avenue 
they made. 

There was a draped doorway, but no 
door ; and as he stopped here, looking 
in unseen, he felt a pang. Surely not 
like jealousy? For why like jealousy? 
There were only his daughter and his 
brother there : he, with his chair drawn 
to the hearth, enjoying the warmth of 
the evening wood-fire ; she seated at a 
little table, busied with some embroid- 
ery-work. Allowing for the great differ- 
ence in the still-life of the picture, the 
figures were much the same as of old ; 
his brother being sufficiently like him- 
self to represent himself, for a moment, 
in the composition. So had he sat 
many a night, over a coal-fire far away ; 
so had she sat, devoted to him. Yet 
surely there was nothing to be jealous 
of in the old miserable poverty. Whence, 
then, the pang in his heart ! 

“ Do you know, uncle, I think you 
are growing young again?” 

Her uncle shook his head, and said, 
“Since when, my dear; since when?” 

“I think,” returned Little Dorrit, 
plying her needle, “ that you have been 
growing younger for weeks past. So 
cheerful, uncle, and so ready, and so 
interested ! ” 

“ My dear child — all you.” 

“ All me, uncle ! ” 

“Yes, yes. You have done me a 
world of good. You have been so con- 
siderate of me, and so tender with me, 
and so delicate in trying to hide your 
attentions from me, that I — well, well, 
well ! It ’s treasured up, my darling, 
treasured up.” 

“ There is nothing in it but your own 
fresh fancy, uncle,” said Little Dorrit, 
cheerfully. 

“ Well, well, well ! ” murmured the 
old man. “ Thank God ! ” 

She paused for an instant in her work 


to look at him, and her look revived 
that former pain in her father’s breast, — 
in his poor weak breast, so full of con- 
tradictions, vacillations, inconsistencies, 
the little peevish perplexities of this 
ignorant life, mists which the morning 
without a night only can clear away. 

“ I have been freer with you, you 
see, my dove,” said the old man, “since 
we have been alone. I say, alone, for I 
don’t count Mrs. General ; I don’t care 
for her ; she has nothing to do with me. 
But I know Fanny was impatient of 
me. And I don’t wonder at it, or com- 
plain of it, for I am sensible that I must 
be in the way, though I try to keep out 
of it as well as I can. I know I am 
not fit company for our company. My 
brother William,” said the old man, 
admiringly, “ is fit company for mon- 
archs ; but not so your uncle, my dear. 
Frederick Dorrit is no credit to William 
Dorrit, and he knows it quite well. 
Ah ! Why, here’s your father, Amy ! 
My dear William, welcome back ! My 
beloved brother, I am rejoiced to see 
you ! ” 

(Turning his head in speaking, he 
had caught sight of him as he stood in 
the doorway.) 

Little Dorrit with a cry of pleasure 
put her arms about her father’s neck, 
and kissed him again and again. Her 
father was a little impatient, and a little 
querulous. “ I am glad to find you at 
last, Amy,” he said. “ Ha. Really I 
am glad to find — hum — any one to 
receive me at last. I appear to have 
been — ha — so little expected, that 
upon my word I began — ha, hum — to 
think it might be ri^ht to offer an 
apology for — ha — taking the liberty of 
coming back at all.” 

“ It was so late, my dear William,” 
said his brother, “ that we had given 
you up for to-night.” 

“ I am stronger than you, dear Fred- 
erick,” returned his brother, with an 
elaboration of fraternity in which there 
was severity; “and I hope I can travel 
without detriment at — ha — any hour 
I choose.” 

“ Surely, surely,” returned the other, 
with a misgiving that he had given 
offence, — “ surely, William.” 

“Thank you, Amy,” pursued Mr. 


372 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


Dorrit, as she helped him to put off his 
wrappers, “ I can do it without assist- 
ance. I — ha — need not trouble you, 
Amy. Could I have a morsel of bread 
and a glass of wine, or — hum — would 
it cause too much inconvenience ? ” 

“ Dear father, you shall have supper 
in a very few minutes.” 

“ Thank you, my love,” said Mr. 
Dorrit, with a reproachful frost upon 
him; “I — ha — am afraid I am caus- 
ing inconvenience. Hum. Mrs. Gen- 
eral pretty well ? ” 

“ Mrs. General complained of a head- 
ache, and of being fatigued; and so, 
when we gave you up, she went to bed, 
dear.” 

Perhaps Mr. Dorrit thought that Mrs. 
General had done well in being over- 
come by the disappointment of his not 
arriving. At any rate, his face relaxed, 
and he said, with obvious satisfaction, 
“ Extremely sorry to hear that Mrs. 
General is not well.” 

During this short dialogue, his daugh- 
ter had been observant of him, with 
something more than her usual interest. 
It would seem as though he had a 
changed or worn appearance in her eyes, 
and he perceived and resented it ; for 
he said, with renewed peevishness, when 
he had divested himself of his travel- 
ling-cloak, and had come to the fire, — 

“Amy, what are you looking at? 
What do you see in me that causes you 
to — ha — concentrate your solicitude 
on me in that — hum — very particular 
manner ? ” 

“ 1 did not know it, father ; I -beg 
your pardon. It gladdens my eyes to 
see you again ; that ’s all.” 

“Don’t say that’s all, because — ha 
— that’s not all. You — hum — you 
think,” said Mr. Dorrit, with an accu- 
satory emphasis, “that I am not look- 
ing well.” 

“ I thought you looked a little tired, 
love.” 

“ Then you are mistaken,” said Mr. 
Dorrit. “ Ha, I am not tired. Ha, 
hum. I am very much fresher than 
I was when I w'ent away.” 

He was so inclined to be angry, that 
she said nothing more in her justifica- 
tion, but remained quietly beside him 
embracing his arm. As he stood thus, 


with his brother on the other side, he 
fell into a heavy doze, of not a minute’s 
duration, and awoke with a start. 

“ Frederick,” he said, turning on his 
brother; “ I recommend you to go to 
bed immediately.” 

“ No, William. I ’ll wait and see 
you sup.” 

“Frederick,” he retorted, “I beg 
you to go to bed. I — ha — make it a 
personal request that you go to bed. 
You ought to have been in bed long 
ago. You are very feeble.” 

“ Hah ! ” said the old man, who had 
no wish but to please him. “Well, 
well, well ! I dare say I am.” 

“My dear Frederick,” returned Mr. 
Dorrit, with an astonishing superiority 
to his brother’s failing powers, “ there 
can be no doubt of it. It is painful to 
me to see you so weak. Ha. It dis- 
tresses me. Hum. I don’t find you 
looking at all w'ell. You are not fit for 
this sort of thing. You should be more 
careful, you should be very careful.” 

“ Shall I go to bed? ” asked Freder- 
ick. 

“ Dear Frederick,” said Mr. Dorrit, 
“ do, I adjure you ! Good night, 
brother. I hope you will be stronger 
to-morrow. I am not at all pleased 
with your looks. Good night, dear 
fellow'.” After dismissing his brother 
in this gracious way, he fell into a doze 
again, before the old man was well out 
of the room ; and he would have stum- 
bled forward upon the logs, but for his 
daughter’s restraining hold. 

“ Your uncle winders very much, 
Amy,” he said, when he was thus 
roused. “He is less — ha — coherent, 
and his conversation is more — hum — 
broken, than I have — ha, hum — ever 
known. Has he had any illness since 
I have been gone?” 

“ No, father.” 

“You — ha — see a great change in 
him, Amy?” 

“ I had not observed it, dear.” 

“ Greatly broken,” said Mr. Dorrit, — 
“greatly broken, My poor, affection- 
ate, failing Frederick ! Ha. Even tak- 
ing into account what he was before, 
he is — hum — sadly broken ! ” 

His supper, w'hich was brought to 
him there, and spread upon the little 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


373 


table where he had seen her working, 
diverted his attention. She sat at his 
side as in the days that were gone, for 
the first time since those days ended. 
They were alone, and she helped him 
to his meat and poured out his drink 
for him, as she had been used to do 
in the prison. All this happened now 
for the first time since their accession 
to wealth. She was afraid to look at 
him much, after the offence he had 
taken ; but she noticed two occasions 
in the course of his meal when he all 
of a sudden looked at her, and looked 
about him, as if the association were 
so strong that he needed assurance 
from his sense of sight that they were 
not in the old prison-room. Both 
times, he put his hand to his head as 
if he missed his old black cap, ■*- though 
it had been ignominiously given away 
in the Marshalsea, and had never got 
free to that hour, but still hovered 
about the yards on the head of his 
successor. 

He took very little supper, but was 
a long time over it, and often revert- 
ed to his brother’s declining state. 
Though he expressed the greatest pity 
for him, he was almost bitter upon 
him. He said that poor Frederick — 
ha, hum — drivelled. There was no 
other word to express it, — drivelled. 
Poor fellow ! It was melancholy to 
reflect what Amy must have undergone 
from the excessive tediousness of his 
society, — wandering and babbling on, 
poor dear estimable creature, wander- 
ing and babbling on, — if it had not 
been for the relief she had had in Mrs. 
General. Extremely sorry, he then 
repeated with his former satisfaction, 
that that — ha — superior woman was 
poorly. 

Little Dorrit, in her watchful love, 
would have remembered the lightest 
thing he said or did that night, though 
she had had no subsequent reason to 
recall that night. She always remem- 
bered, that when he looked about him 
under the strong influence of the old as- 
sociation, he tried to keep it out of her 
mind, and perhaps out of his own too, by 
immediately expatiating on the great 
riches and great company that had 
encompassed him in his absence, and 


on the lofty position he and his family 
had to sustain. Nor did she fail to re- 
call that there were two undercurrents, 
side by side, pervading all his discourse 
and all his manner, — one showing her 
how well he had got on without her, 
and how independent he was of her ; 
the other in a fitful and unintelligible 
way almost complaining of her, as if it 
had been possible that she had neglect- 
ed him while he was away. 

His telling her of the glorious state 
that Mr. Merdle kept, and of the Court 
that bowed before him, naturally brought 
him to Mrs. Merdle. So naturally in- 
deed, that, although there was an un- 
usual want of sequence in the greater 
part of his remarks, he passed to her at 
once, and asked how she was. 

“ She is very well. She is going away 
next week.” 

“ Home ? ” asked Mr. Dorrit. 

“ After a few weeks’ stay upon the 
road.” 

“ She will be a vast loss here,” said 
Mr. Dorrit. “A vast — ha — acquisi- 
tion at home. To Fanny, and to — 
hum — the rest of the — ha — great 
world.” 

Little Dorrit thought of the competi- 
tion that was to be entered upon, and 
assented very softly. 

“ Mrs. Merdle is going to have a 
great farewell Assembly, dear, and a 
dinner before it. She has been express- 
ing her anxiety that you should return 
in time. She has invited both you and 
me to her dinner.” 

“ She is — ha — very kind. When is 
the day ? ” 

“ The day after to-morrow. ” 

“ Write round in the morning, and 
say that I have returned, and shall — 
hum — be delighted.” 

“ May I walk with you up the stairs 
to your room, dear? ” 

“ No ! ” he answered, looking angrily 
round ; for he was moving away, as if 
forgetful of leave-taking. “You may 
not, Amy. I want no help. I am your 
father, not your infirm uncle ! ” He 
checked himself, as abruptly as he had 
broken into this reply, and said, “ You 
have not kissed me, Amy. Good night, 
my dear! We must marry — ha — we 
must marry you , now.” With that he 


374 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


went, more slowly and more tired, up 
the staircase to his rooms, and, almost 
as soon as he got there, dismissed his 
valet. His next care was to look about 
him for his Paris purchases, and, after 
opening their cases and carefully sur- 
veying them, to put them aw r ay under 
lock and key. After that, what with 
dozing and what with castle-building, 
he lost himself for a long time, so that 
there was a touch of morning on the 
eastward rim of the desolate Campagna 
when he crept to bed. 

Mrs. General sent up her compliments 
in good time next day, and hoped he 
had rested well after his fatiguing jour- 
ney. He sent down his compliments, 
and begged to inform Mrs. General that 
he had rested very well indeed, and was 
in high condition. Nevertheless, he 
did not come forth from his own rooms 
until late in the afternoon ; and, al- 
though he then caused himself to be 
magnificently arrayed for a drive with 
Mrs. General and his daughter, his ap- 
pearance was scarcely up to his descrip- 
tion of himself. 

As the family had no visitors that day, 
its four members dined alone together. 
Pie conducted Mrs. General to the seat 
at his right hand, with immense cere- 
mony ; and Little Dorrit could not but 
notice, as she followed with her uncle, 
both that he was again elaborately 
dressed, and that his manner towards 
Mrs. General was very particular. The 
perfect formation of that accomplished 
lady’s surface rendered it difficult to 
displace an atom of its genteel glaze, 
but Little Dorrit thought she descried 
a slight thaw of triumph in a corner of 
her frosty eye. 

Notwithstanding what may be called 
in these pages the Pruny and Prismatic 
nature of the family banquet, Mr. Dor- 
lit several times fell asleep while it was 
in progress. His fits of dozing were as 
sudden as they had been overnight, 
and were as short and profound. When 
the first of these slumberings seized him, 
Mrs. General looked almost amazed ; 
but, on each recurrence of the symp- 
toms, she told her polite beads, Papa, 
Potatoes, Poultry, Prunes, and Prism ; 
and, by dint of going through that in- 
fallible performance very slowly, ap- 


peared to finish her rosary at about the 
same time as Mr. Dorrit started from 
his sleep. 

He was again painfully aware of a 
somnolent tendency in Frederick (which 
had no existence out of his own imagi- 
nation), and after dinner, when Freder- 
ick had withdrawn, privately apologized 
to Mrs. General for the poor man. 
“ The most estimable and affectionate 
of brothers,” he said, “but — ha, hum 

— broken up altogether. Unhappily, 
declining fast.” 

“Mr. Frederick, , sir,” quoth Mrs. 
General, “ is habitually absent and 
drooping, but let us hope it is not so 
bad as that.” 

Mr. Dorrit, however, was determined 
not to let him off. “ Fast declining, 
madam. A wreck. A ruin. Moul- 
dering away before our eyes. Hum. 
Good Frederick ! ” 

“ You left Mrs. Sparkler quite well 
and happy, I trust? ” said Mrs. General, 
after heaving a cool sigh for Frederick. 

“Surrounded,” replied Mr. Dorrit, 
“by — ha — all that can charm the 
taste, and — hum — elevate the mind. 
Happy, my dear madam, in a — hum 

— husband.” 

Mrs. General was a little fluttered; 
seeming delicately to put "the word away 
with her gloves, as if there were no 
knowing what it might lead to. 

“Fanny,” Mr. Dorrit continued, — 
“ Fanny, Mrs. General, has high quali- 
ties. Ha. Ambition — hum — pur- 
pose, consciousness of — ha — position, 
determination to support that position 

— ha, hum — grace, beauty, and native 
nobility.” 

“No doubt,” said Mrs. General (with 
a little extra stiflness). 

“ Combined with these qualities, 
madam,” said Mr. Dorrit, “ Fanny has 

— ha — manifested one blemish which 
has made me — hum — made me uneasy, 
and — ha — I must add, angry ; but 
which I trust may now be considered at 
an end, even as to herself, and which is 
undoubtedly at an end as to — ha — 
others.” 

“To what, Mr. Dorrit,” returned 
Mrs. General, with her gloves again 
somewhat excited, “ can you allude ? 
I am at a loss to — ” 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


375 


“Do not say that, my dear madam,” 
interrupted Mr. Dorrit. 

Mrs. General’s voice, as it died away, 
pronounced the words, “at a loss to 
imagine.” 

After which, Mr. Dorrit was seized 
with a doze for about a minute, out of 
which he sprang with spasmodic nitn- 
bleness. 

“ I refer, Mrs. General, to that — ha 

— strong spirit of opposition, or — hum 

— I might say — ha — jealousy in Fan- 
ny, which has occasionally risen against 
the — ha — sense I entertain of — hum 

— the claims of — ha — the lady with 
whom I have now the honor of com- 
muning.” 

“ Mr. Dorrit,” returned Mrs. Gener- 
al, “ is ever but too obliging, ever but 
too appreciative. If there have been 
moments when I have imagined that 
Miss Dorrit has indeed resented the fa- 
vorable opinion Mr. Dorrit has formed 
of my services, I have found, in that 
only too high opinion, my consolation 
and recompense.” 

“ Opinion of your services, madam ? ” 
said Mr. Dorrit. 

“Of,” Mrs. General repeated, in an 
elegantly impressive manner, “ my ser- 
vices.” 

“Of your services alone, dear mad- 
am ? ” said Mr. Dorrit. 

“ I presume,” retorted Mrs. General, 
in her former impressive manner, “ of 
my services alone. For, to what else,” 
said Mrs. General, with a slightly in- 
terrogative action of her gloves, “could 
I impute — ? ” 

“To — ha — yourself, Mrs. General. 
Ha, hum. To yourself and your mer- 
its,” was Mr. Dorrit’s rejoinder. 

“Mr. Dorrit will pardon me,” said 
Mrs. General, “ if I remark that this is 
not a time or place for the pursuit of the 
present conversation. Mr. Dorrit will 
excuse me if I remind him that Miss 
Dorrit is in the adjoining room, and is 
visible to myself while I utter her name. 
Mr. Dorrit will forgive me if I observe 
that I am agitated, and that I find there 
are moments when weaknesses I sup- 
posed myself to have subdued return 
with redoubled power. Mr. Dorrit will 
allow me to withdraw.” 

“ Hum. Perhaps we may resume 


this — ha — interesting conversation,” 
said Mr. Dorrit, “ at another time "; un- 
less it should be, what I hope it is not 
— hum — in any way disagreeable to — 
ha — Mrs. General.” 

“Mr. Dorrit,” said Mrs. General, 
casting down her eyes as she rose with 
a bend, “ must ever claim my homage 
and obedience.” 

Mrs. General then took herself off in 
a stately way, and not with that amount 
of trepidation upon her which might 
have been expected in a less remarkable 
woman. Mr. Dorrit, who had conducted 
his part of the dialogue with a certain 
majestic and admiring condescension, — 
much as some people may be seen to 
conduct themselves in Church, and to 
perform their part in the Service, — ap- 
peared, on the whole, very well satisfied 
with himself and with Mrs. General too. 
On the return of that lady to tea, she 
had touched herself up with a little 
powder and pomatum, and was not 
without moral enhancement likewise ; 
the latter showing itself in much sweet 
patronage of manner towards Miss Dor- 
rit, and in an air of as tender interest in 
Mr. Dorrit as was consistent with rigid 
propriety. At the close of the evening 
when she rose to retire, Mr. Dorrit 
took her by the hand, as if he were go- 
ing to lead her out into the Piazza of 
the People to walk a minuet b} r moon- 
light, and with great solemnity conduct- 
ed her to the room door, where he raised 
her knuckles to his lips. Having parted 
from her with what may be conjectured 
to have been a rather bony kiss, of a 
cosmetic flavor, he gave his daughter 
his blessing, graciously. And, having 
thus hinted that there was something 
remarkable in the wind, he again went 
to bed. 

He remained in the seclusion of his 
own chamber next morning ; but, early 
in the afternoon, sent down his best 
compliments to Mrs. General, by Mr. 
Tinkler, and begged she would accom- 
pany Miss Dorrit on an airing without 
him. His daughter was dressed for 
Mrs. Merdle’s dinner before he ap- 
peared. He then presented himself, in 
a refulgent condition as to his attire, 
but looking indefinably shrunken ' and 
old. However, as he was plainly de- 


376 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


termined to be angry with her if she 
so much as asked him how he was, she 
only ventured to kiss his cheek, before 
accompanying him to Mrs. Merdle’s 
with an anxious heart. 

The distance that they had to go was 
very short, but he was at his building 
work again before the carriage had half 
traversed it. Mrs. Merdle received 
him with great distinction ; the Bosom 
was in admirable preservation, and on 
the best terms with itself ; the dinner 
was very choice ; and the company 
was very select. 

It was principally English ; saving 
that it comprised the usual French 
Count and the usual Italian Marchese, 
— decorative social mile-stones, always 
to be found in certain places, and vary- 
ing very little in appearance. The ta- 
ble was long, and the dinner was long ; 
and Little Dorrit, overshadowed by a 
large pair of black whiskers and a large 
white cravat, lost sight of her father al- 
together, until a servant put a scrap of 
paper in her hand, with a whispered re- 
quest from Mrs. Merdle that she would 
read it directly. Mrs. Merdle had writ- 
ten on it in pencil, “ Pray come and 
speak to Mr. Dorrit, I doubt if he is 
well.” 

She was hurrying to him, unobserved, 
when he got up out of his chair, and, 
leaning over the table, called to her, 
supposing her to be still in her place, — 

“ Amy, Amy, my child ! ” 

The action was so unusual, to say 
nothing of his strange, eager appearance 
and strange, eager voice, that it instan- 
taneously caused a profound silence. 

“Amy, my dear,” he repeated. 
“ Will you go and see if Bob is on the 
lock ! ” 

She was at his side, and touching 
him, but he still perversely supposed her 
to be in her seat, and called out, still 
leaning over the table, “Amy, Amy, 
I don’t feel quite myself. Ha. I 
don’t know what ’s the matter with me. 
I particularly wish to see Bob. Ha. 
Of all the turnkeys, he ’s as much 
my friend as yours. See if Bob is in 
the lodge, and beg him to come to 
me.” 

All the guests were now in consterna- 
tion, and everybody rose. 


“ Dear father, I am not there ; I am 
here, by you.” 

“ O, you are here, Amy ! Good. 
Hum. Good. Ha. Call Bob. If he 
has been relieved, and is not on the 
lock, tell Mrs. Bangham to go and 
fetch him.” 

She was gently trying to get him 
away ; but he resisted, and would not 
go. 

“ I tell you, child,” he said petulant- 
ly, “I can’t be got up the narrow 
stairs without Bob. Ha. Send for 
Bob. Hum. Send for Bob — best of 
all the turnkeys — send for Bob ! ” 

He looked confusedly about him, 
and, becoming conscious of the number 
of faces by which he was surrounded, 
addressed them : — 

“Ladies and gentlemen, the duty — 
ha — devolves upon me of — hum — 
welcoming you to the Marshalsea. 
Welcome to the Marshalsea! The 
space is — ha — limited — limited — the 
parade might be wider ; but you will find 
it apparently grow larger after a time — 
a time, ladies and gentlemen — and the 
air is, all things considered, very good. 
It blows over the — ha — Surrey hills. 
Blows over the Surrey hills. This is 
the Snuggery. Hum. Supported by a 
small subscription of the — ha — colle- 
giate body. In return for which — hot 
water — general kitchen — and a little 
domestic advantages. Those who are 
habituated to the — ha — Marshalsea, 
are pleased to call me its Father. I 
am accustomed to be complimented by 
strangers as the — ha — Father of the 
Marshalsea. Certainly, if years of resi- 
dence may establish a claim to ,so — ha 

— honorable a title, I may accept the 

— hum — conferred distinction. My 
child, ladies and gentlemen. My 
daughter. Bom here ! ” 

She was not ashamed of it, or 
ashamed of him. She was pale and 
frightened ; but she had no other care 
than to soothe him and get him away, 
for his own dear sake. She was be- 
tween him and the wondering faces, 
turned round upon his breast with her 
own face raised to his.- He held her 
clasped in his left arm, and between 
whiles her low voice was heard tender- 
ly imploring him to go away with her. 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


377 


“Born here,” he repeated, shedding 
tears. “ Bred here. Ladies and gen- 
tlemen, my daughter. Child of an un- 
fortunate father, but — ha — always a 
gentleman. Poor, no doubt, but — hum 

— proud. Always proud. It has be- 
come a — hum — not infrequent cus- 
tom for my — ha — personal admirers 

— personal admirers solely — to be 
pleased to express their desire to ac- 
knowledge my semi-official position 
here, by offering — ha — little tributes, 
which usually take the form of — ha — 
Testimonials — pecuniary Testimonials. 
In the acceptance of those — ha — vol- 
untary recognitions of my humble en- 
deavors to — hum — to uphold a Tone 
here — a Tone — I beg it to be under- 
stood that I do not consider myself 
compromised. Ha. Not compromised. 
Ha. Not a beggar. No; I repudiate 
the title ! At the same time, far be it 
from me to — hum — to put upon the 
fine feelings by which my partial friends 
are actuated the slight of scrupling to 
admit that those offerings are — hum — 
highly acceptable. On the contrary, 
they are most acceptable. In my child’s 
name, if not in my own, I make the 
admission in the fullest manner, at the 
same time reserving — ha — shall I say 
my personal dignity ? Ladies and gen- 
tlemen, God bless you all ! ” 

By this time, the exceeding mortifica- 
tion undergone by the Bosom had occa- 
sioned the withdrawal of the greater 
part of the company into other rooms. 
The few who had lingered thus long fol- 
lowed the rest, and Little Dorrit and 
her father were left to the servants and 
themselves. Dearest and most pre- 
cious to her, he would come with her 
now, would he not? He replied to her 
fervid entreaties, that he would never 
be able to get up the narrow stairs with- 
out Bob, where was Bob, would nobody 
fetch Bob ! Under pretence of looking 
for Bob, she got him out against the 
stream of gay company now pouring in 
for the evening assembly, and got him 
into a coach that had just set down its 
load, and got him home. 

The broad stairs of his Roman pal- 
ace were contracted in his failing sight 
to the narrow stairs of his London 
prison ; and he would suffer no one but 


her to touch him, his brother excepted. 
They got him up to his room without 
help, and laid him down on his bed. 
And from that hour his poor maimed 
spirit, only remembering the place 
where it had broken its wings, cancelled 
the dream through which it had since 
groped, and knew of nothing beyond 
the Marshalsea. When he heard foot- 
steps in the street, he took them for the 
old weary tread in the yards. When the 
hour came for locking up, he supposed 
all strangers to be excluded for the 
night. When the time for opening 
came again, he was so anxious to see 
Bob, that they were fain to patch up a 
narrative how that Bob — many a year 
dead then, gentle turnkey — had taken 
cold, but hoped to be out to-morrow, 
or the next day, or the next at fur- 
thest. 

He fell away into a weakness so ex- 
treme that he could not raise his hand. 
But he still protected his brother ac- 
cording to his long usage ; and would 
say with some complacency, fifty times 
a day, when he saw him standing by 
his bed, “ My good Frederick, sit down. 
You are very feeble indeed.” 

They tried him with Mrs. General, 
but he had not the faintest knowledge 
of her. Some injurious suspicion lodged 
itself in his brain, that she wanted to 
supplant Mrs. Bangham, and that she 
was given to drinking. He charged her 
with it in no measured terms ; and was 
so urgent with his daughter to go round 
to the Marshal and entreat him to turn 
her out, that she was never reproduced 
after the first failure. 

Saving that he once asked “ if Tip 
had gone outside ?” the remembrance 
of his two children not present seemed 
to have departed from him. But the 
child who had done so much for him, 
and had been so poorly repaid, was 
never out of his mind. Not that he 
spared her, or was fearful of her being 
spent by watching and fatigue ; he was 
not more troubled on that score than he 
had usually been. No ; he loved her 
in his old way. They were in the jail 
again, and she tended him, and he had 
constant need of her, and could not 
turn without her ; and he even told her, 
sometimes, that he was content to have 


373 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


undergone a great deal for her sake. 
As to her, she bent over his bed with 
her quiet face against his, and would 
have laid down her own life to restore 
him. 

When he had been sinking in this 
painless way for two or three days, she 
observed him to be troubled by the 
ticking of his watch, — a pompous gold 
watch that made as great a to-do about 
its going, as if nothing else went but 
itself and Time. She suffered it to run 
down ; but he was still uneasy, and 
showed that was not what he wanted. 
At length he roused himself to explain 
that he wanted money to be raised on 
this watch. He was quite pleased when 
she pretended to take it away for the 
purpose, and afterwards had a relish for 
his little tastes of wine and jelly, that 
he had not had before. 

He soon made it plain that this was 
so ; for in another day or two he sent 
off his sleeve-buttons and finger-rings. 
He had an amazing satisfaction in in- 
trusting her with these errands, and 
appeared to consider it equivalent to 
making the most methodical and provi- 
dent arrangements. After his trinkets, 
or such of them as he had been able to 
see about him, were gone, his clothes 
engaged his attention ; and it is as 
likely as not that he was kept alive for 
some days by the satisfaction of send- 
ing them, piece by piece, to an imagi- 
nary pawnbroker’s. 

Thus for ten days Little Dorrit bent 
oyer his pillow, laying her cheek against 
his. Sometimes she was so worn out 
that for a few minutes they would slum- 
ber together. Then she would awake ; 
to recollect with fast-flowing silent tears 
what it was that touched her face, and 
to see, stealing over the cherished face 
upon the pillow, a deeper shadow than 
the shadow of the Marshalsea Wall. 

Quietly, quietly, all the lines of the 
plan of the great Castle melted, one 
after another. Quietly, quietly, the 
ruled and cross-ruled countenance on 
which they were traced became fair 
and blank. Quietly, quietly, the re- 
flected marks of the prison bars and of 
the zigzag iron on the wall-top faded 
away. Quietly, quietly, the face sub- 
sided into a far younger likeness of her 


own than she had ever seen under the 
gray hair, and sank to rest. 

At first her uncle was stark distracted. 
“ O my brother ! O William, William ! 
You to go before me ; you to go alone ; 
you to go, and I to remain 1 You, so 
far superior, so distinguished, so noble ; 
I, a poor useless creature fit for nothing, 
and whom no one would have missed ! ” 

It did her, for the time, the good of 
having him to think of, and to succor. 
“Uncle, dear uncle, spare yourself, 
spare me ! ” 

The old man was not deaf to the last 
words. When he did begin to restrain 
himself, it was that he might spare her. 
He had no care for himself; but, with 
all the remaining power of the honest 
heart, stunned so long and now awaking 
to be broken, he honored and blessed 
her. 

“ O God,” he cried, before they left 
the room, with his wrinkled hands 
clasped over her. “Thou seest this 
daughter of my dear dead brother ! 
All that I have looked upon, with my 
half-blind and sinful eyes, Thou hast 
discerned clearly, brightly. Not a hair 
of her head shall be harmed before 
Thee. Thou wilt uphold her here to 
her last hour. And I know Thou wilt 
reward her hereafter ! ” 

They remained in a dim room near, 
until it was almost midnight, quiet and 
sad together. At times his grief would 
seek relief in a burst like that in which 
it had found its earliest expression ; but, 
besides that his little strength would 
soon have been unequal to such strains, 
he never failed to recall her words, and 
to reproach himself and calm himself. 
The only utterance with which he in- 
dulged his sorrow was the frequent ex- 
clamation that his brother was gone, 
alone ; that they had been together in 
the outset of their lives, that they had 
fallen into misfortune together, that 
they had kept together through their 
many years of poverty, that they had 
remained together to that day ; and 
that his brother was gone alone, alone ! 

They parted, heavy and sorrowful. 
She would not consent to leave him 
anywhere but in his own room, and she 
saw him lie down in his clothes upon 
his bed, and covered him with her own 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


379 


hands. Then she sank upon her own 
bed, and fell into a deep sleep, — the 
sleep of exhaustion and rest, though 
not of complete release from a pervad- 
ing consciousness of affliction. Sleep, 
good Little Dorrit. Sleep through the 
night ! 

It was a moonlight night ; but the 
moon rose late, being long past the 
full. When it was high in the peace- 
ful firmament, it shone through half- 
closed lattice blinds into the solemn 
room where the stumblings and wan- 
derings of a life had so lately ended. 
Two quiet figures were within the 
room, — two figures, equally still and 
impassive, equally removed by an un- 
traversable distance from the teeming 
earth and all that it contains, though 
soon to lie in it. 

One figure reposed upon the bed. 
The other, kneeling on the floor, 
drooped over it ; the arms easily and 
peacefully resting on the coverlet ; the 
face bowed down, so that the lips 
touched the hand over which with its 
last breath it had bent. The tw'O 
brothers were before their Father; far 
beyond the twilight judgments of this 
world; high above its mists and ob- 
scurities. 


CHAPTER XX. 

INTRODUCES THE NEXT. 

The passengers were landing from 
the packet on the pier at Calais. A 
low-lying place and a low-spirited place 
Calais was, with the tide ebbing out 
towards low- water mark. There had 
been no more water on the bar than 
had sufficed to float the packet in ; and 
now the bar itself, with a shallow break 
of sea over it, looked like a lazy marine 
monster just risen to the surface, whose 
form was indistinctly shown as it lay 
asleep. The meagre light-house all in 
white, haunting the seaboard, as if it 
were the ghost of an edifice that had 
once had color and rotundity, dripped 
melancholy tears after its late buffeting 
by the waves. The long rows of gaunt 
black piles, slimy and wet and weather- 
worn, with funeral garlands of sea-weed 


twisted about them by the late tide, 
might have represented an unsightly 
marine cemetery. Every wave-dashed, 
storm-beaten object was so low and so 
little under the broad gray sky, in the 
noise of the wind and sea, and before 
the curling lines of surf, making at it 
ferociously, that the wonder was there 
was any Calais left, and that its low 
gates and low wall &nd low roofs and 
low ditches and low sand-hills and low 
ramparts and flat streets, had not yield- 
ed long ago to the undermining and 
besieging sea, like the fortifications 
children make on the sea-shore. 

After slipping among oozy piles and 
planks, stumbling up wet steps and en- 
countering many salt difficulties, the 
passengers entered on their comfortless 
peregrination along the pier ; where all 
the French vagabonds and English out- 
laws in the town (half the population) 
attended to prevent their recovery from 
bewilderment. After being minutely 
inspected by all the English, and 
claimed and reclaimed and counter- 
claimed as prizes by all the French, in a 
hand-to-hand scuffle three quarters of a 
mile long, they were at last free to enter 
the streets, and to make off in their 
various directions, hotly pursued. _ 
Clennam, harassed by more anxieties 
than one, was among this devoted band. 
Having rescued the most defenceless 
of his compatriots from situations of 
great extremity, he now went his way 
alone ; or as nearly alone as he could 
be, with a native gentleman, in a suit 
of grease and a cap of the same mate- 
rial, giving chase at a distance of some 
fifty yards, and continually calling after 
him “ Hi ! Ice-say! You! Seer! 
Ice-say ! Nice Oatel ! ” 

Even this hospitable person, how- 
ever, was left behind at last, and Clen- 
nam pursued his way unmolested. 
There was a tranquil air in the town 
after the turbulence of the Channel and 
the beach, and its dulness in that com- 
parison was agreeable. He met new 
groups of his countrymen, who had 
all a straggling air of having at one 
time overblown themselves, like cer- 
tain uncomfortable kinds of flowers, and 
of being, now, mere weeds. They had 
all an air, too, of lounging out a limited 


380 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


round, day after day, which strongly 
reminded him of the Marshalsea. But, 
taking no further note of them than 
was sufficient to give birth to the re- 
flection, he sought out a certain street 
and number, which he kept in his 
mind. 

“ So Pancks said,” he murmured to 
himself, as he stopped before a dull 
house answering to the address. “ I 
suppose his information to be correct, 
and his discovery among Mr. Casby’s 
loose papers indisputable ; but, without 
it, I should hardly have supposed this 
to be a likely place.” 

A dead sort of house, with a dead 
wall over the way and a dead gateway 
at the side, where a pendent bell- 
handle produced two dead tinkles, and 
a knocker produced a dead, flat surface- 
tapping, that seemed not to have depth 
enough in it to penetrate even the 
cracked door. However, the door jarred 
open on a dead sort of spring ; and he 
closed it behind him as he entered a 
dull yard, soon brought to a close at 
the back by another dead wall, where 
an attempt had been made to train 
some creeping shrubs, which were 
dead ; and to make a little fountain in 
a grotto, which was dry ; and to deco- 
rate that with a little statue, which w r as 
gone. 

The entry to the house was on the 
left, and it was garnished, as the outer 
gateway was, with two printed bills in 
French and English, announcing Fur- 
nished Apartments to let, with imme- 
diate possession. A strong cheerful 
peasant woman, all stocking, petticoat, 
white cap, and ear-ring, stood here in 
a dark doorway, and said, with a pleas- 
ant show of teeth, “ Ice-say ! Seer ! 
Who?” 

Clennam, replying in French, said 
the English lady ; he wished to see 
the English lady. “ Enter then and 
ascend, if you please,” returned the 
peasant woman, in French likewise. 
He did both, and followed her up a 
dark bare staircase to a back room on 
the first floor. Hence there was a 
gloomy view of the yard that was dull, 
and of the shrubs ffiat were dead, and 
of the fountain that was dry, and of the 
pedestal of the statue that was gone. 


“ Monsieur Blandois,” said Clen- 
nam. 

“With pleasure, Monsieur.” 

Thereupon the woman withdrew, and 
left him to look at the room. It was 
the pattern of room always to be found 
in such a house. Cool, dull, and dark. 
Waxed floor very slippery. A room 
not large enough to skate in ; not 
adapted to the easy pursuit of any oth-j 
er occupation. Red and white cur-! 
tained windows, little straw mat, little 
round table with a tumultuous assem- 
blage of legs underneath, clumsy rush- 
bottomed chairs, tw r o great red velvet 
arm-chairs affording plenty of space to 
be uncomfortable in, bureau, chimney- 
glass in several pieces pretending to 
be in one piece, pair of gaudy vases 
of very artificial flowers ; betw een them 
a Greek warrior with his helmet off, 
sacrificing a clock to the Genius of 
France. 

After some pause, a door of commu- 
nication with another room was opened, 
and a lady entered. She manifested 
great surprise on seeing Clennam, and 
her glance went round the room in 
search of some one else. 

“Pardon me, Miss Wade. I am 
alone.” 

“ It was not your name that was 
brought to me.” 

“No; I know that. _ Excuse me. 

I have already had experience that my 
name does not predispose you to an 
interview ; and I ventured to mention 
the name of one I am in search of.” 

“ Pray,” she returned, motioning him 
to a chair so coldly that he remained 
standing, “ what name was it that you 
gave ? ” 

“ I mentioned the name of Blandois.” 

“Blandois?” 

“ A name you are acquainted with.” 

“It is strange,” she said, frowning, 
“that you should still press an unde- 
sired interest in me and my acquaint- 
ances, in me and my affairs, Mr. Clen- 
nam. I don’t know what you mean.” 

“ Pardon me. You know r the name ? ” 

“ What can you have to do with the 
name? What can I have to do with 
the name ? What can you have to do 
with my knowing or not knowing any 
name ? I know many names and I 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


38i 


have forgotten many more. This may 
be in the one class, or it may be in the 
other, or I may never have heard it. I 
ana. acquainted with no reason for ex- 
amining myself, or for being examined, 
about it.” 

“If you will allow me,” said Clen- 
nam, “ I will tell you my reason for 
pressing the subject. I admit that I do 
press it, and I must beg you to forgive 
me, if I do so very earnestly. The rea- 
son is all mine. I do not insinuate that 
it is in any way yours.” 

“ Well, sir,” she returned, repeating 
a little less haughtily; than before her 
former invitation to him to be seated ; 
to which he now deferred, as she seated 
herself. “ I am at least glad to know 
that this is not another bondswoman of 
some friend of yours, who is bereft of 
free choice, and whom I have spirited 
away. I will hear your reason, if you 
please.” 

“ First, to identify the person of whom 
we speak,” said Clennam, “ let me ob- 
serve that it is the person you met in 
London some time back. You will re- 
member meeting him near the river, — 
in the Adelphi ? ” 

“ You mix yourself most unaccounta- 
bly with my business,” she replied, 
looking full at him with stern displeas- 
ure. “ How do you know that ? ” 

“ I entreat you not to take it ill. By 
mere accident.” 

“ What accident? ” 

“ Solely the accident of coming upon 
you in the street and seeing the meeting.” 

“ Do you speak of yourself, or of some 
one else?” 

“ Of myself. I saw it.” > 

“ To be sure it was in the open 
street,” she observed, after a few mo- 
ments of less and less angry reflection. 
“ Fifty people might have seen it. It 
would have signified nothing if they 
had.” 

“ Nor do I make my having seen it of 
any moment, nor (otherwise than as an 
explanation of my coming here) do I 
connect my visit with it, or the favor 
that I have to ask,” 

“ Oh ! You have to ask a favor ! It 
occurred to me,” and the handsome face 
looked bitterly at him, “that your man- 
ner was softened, Mr. Clennam.” 


He was content to protest against this 
by a slight action without contesting it in 
words. He then referred to Blandois’s 
disappearance, of which it was probable 
she had heard? No. However proba- 
ble it was to him, she had heard of no 
such thing. Let him look round him 
(she said), and judge for himself what 
general intelligence was likely to reach 
the ears of a woman who had been shut 
up there while it was rife, devouring her 
own heart. When she had uttered this 
denial, which he believed to be true, she 
asked him what he meant by disappear- 
ance? That led to his narrating the 
circumstances in detail, and expressing 
something of his anxiety to discover 
what had really become of the man, and 
to repel the dark suspicions that cloud- 
ed about his mother’s house. She heard 
him with evident surprise, and more 
marks of suppressed interest than he 
had before seen in her ; still they did 
not overcome her distant, proud, and 
self-secluded manner. When he had 
finished, she said nothing but these 
words, — 

“You have not yet told me, sir, what I 
have to do with it, or what the favor 
is. Will you be so good as come to 
that?” 

“I assume,” said Arthur, persever- 
ing in his endeavor to soften her scorn- 
ful demeanor, “ that being in communi- 
cation — may I say, confidential com- 
munication? — with this person — ” 

“You may say, of course, whatever 
you like,” she remarked ; “ but I do 
not subscribe to your assumptions, Mr. 
Clennam, or to any one’s.” 

“ — That being, at least, in personal 
communication with him,” said Clen- 
nam, changing the form of his position, 
in the hope of making it unobjectiona- 
ble, “you can tell me something of his 
antecedents, pursuits, habits, usual place 
of residence. Can give me some little 
clew by which to seek him out in the 
likeliest manner, and either produce 
him, or establish what has become of 
him. This is the favor I ask, and I ask 
it in a distress of mind for which I 
hope you will feel some consideration. 
If you should have any reason for im- 
posing conditions upon me, I _ will re- 
spect it without asking what it is.” 


332 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


“ You chanced to see me in the street 
with the man,” she observed, after be- 
ing, to his mortification, evidently more 
occupied with her own reflections on 
the matter than with his appeal. “ Then 
you knew the man before?” 

“ Not before ; afterwards. I never 
saw him before, but I saw him again on 
this very night of his disappearance. In 
my mother’s room, in fact. I left him 
there. You will read in this paper all 
that is known of him.” 

He handed her one of the printed 
bills, which she read with a steady and 
attentive face. 

“ This is more than / knew of him,” 
she said, giving it back. 

Clennam’s looks expressed his heavy 
disappointment, perhaps his increduli- 
ty ; for she added, in the same unsym- 
pathetic tone : “ You don’t believe it. 
Still it is so. As to personal communi- 
cation ; it seems that there was personal 
communication between him and your 
mother. And yet you say you believe 
her declaration that she knows no more 
of him ! ” 

A sufficiently expressive hint of sus- 
picion was conveyed in these words, 
and in the smile by which they were ac- 
companied, to bring the blood into 
Clennam’s cheeks. 

“Come, sir,” she said, with a cruel 
pleasure in repeating the stab, “I will 
be as open with you as you can desire. 
I will confess that if I cared for my cred- 
it (which I do not), or had a good name 
to preserve (which I have not, for I am 
utterly indifferent to its being consid- 
ered good or bad), I should regard my- 
self as heavily compromised by having 
had anything to do with this fellow. 
Yet he never passed in at my door, — 
never sat in colloquy with me until mid- 
night.” 

She took her revenge for her old 
grudge in thus turning his subject 
against him. Hers was not the nature 
to spare him, and she had no compunc- 
tion. 

“ That he is a low, mercenary wretch ; 
that I first saw him prowling about Ita- 
ly (where I was, not long ago), and that 
I hired him there, as the suitable in- 
strument of a purpose I happened to 
have ; I have no objection to tell you. 


In short, it was worth my while, for my 
own pleasure, — the gratification of a 
strong feeling, — to pay a spy who would 
fetch and carry for money. I paid this 
creature. And I dare say that if I had 
wanted to make such a bargain, and if I 
could have paid him enough, and if he 
could have done it in the dark, free 
from all risk, he would have taken any 
life with as little scruple as he took my 
money. That, at least, is my opinion 
of him ; and I see it is not very far 
removed from yours. Your mother’s 
opinion of him, I am to assume (follow- 
ing your example of assuming this and 
that), was vastly different.” 

“ My mother, let me remind you,” 
said Clennam, “ was first brought into 
communication with him in the unlucky 
course of business.” 

“ It appears to have been an unlucky 
course of business that last brought her 
into communication with him,” returned 
Miss Wade; “and business hours on 
that occasion were late.” 

“You imply,” said Arthur, smarting 
under these cool-handed thrusts, of 
which he had deeply felt the force al- 
ready, “ that there was something — ” 

“Mr. Clennam,” she composedly in- 
terrupted, “recollect that I do not speak 
by implication about the man. He is, I 
say again without disguise, a low merce- 
nary wretch. I suppose such a creature 
goes where there is occasion for him. If 
I had not had occasion for him, you 
would not have seen him and me to- 
gether.” 

Wrung by her persistence in keeping 
that dark side of the case before him, 
of which there was a half-hidden shad- 
ow in his own breast, Clennam was 
silent. 

“ I have spoken of him as still liv- 
ing,” she added, “but he may have 
been put out of the way for anything I 
know. For anything I care, also. I 
have no further occasion for him.” 

With a heavy sigh and a despondent 
air, Arthur Clennam slowly rose. She 
did not rise also, but said, having looked 
at him in the mean while with a fixed 
look of suspicion, and lips angrily com- 
pressed : — 

“ He was the chosen associate of 
your dear friend, Mr. Gowan, was he 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


383 


not? Why don’t you ask your dear 
friend to help you ? ” 

The denial that he was a dear friend 
rose to Arthur’s lips ; but he repressed 
it, remembering his old struggles and 
resolutions, and said, — 

“ Further than that he has never 
seen Blandois since Blandois set out 
for England, Mr. Gowan knows noth- 
ing additional about him. He was a 
chance acquaintance made abroad.” 

“ A chance acquaintance made 
abroad!” she repeated. “Yes. Your 
dear friend has need to divert himself 
with all the acquaintances he can make, 
seeing what a wife he has. I hate his 
wife, sir.” 

The anger with which she said it, the 
more remarkable for being so much 
under her restraint, fixed Clennam’s 
attention, and kept him on the spot. 
It flashed out of her dark eyes as they 
regarded him, quivered in her nostrils, 
and fired the very breath she exhaled ; 
but her face was otherwise composed 
into a disdainful serenity, and her at- 
titude was as calmly and haughtily 
graceful as if she had been in a mood 
of complete indifference. 

“All I will say is, Miss Wade,’’ he 
remarked, “that you can have received 
no provocation to a feeling in which I 
believe you have no sharer.” 

“ You may ask your dear friend, if 
you choose,” she returned, “for his 
opinion upon that subject.” 

“ I am scarcely on those intimate 
terms with my dear friend,” said Ar- 
thur, in spite of his resolutions, “that 
would render my approaching the sub- 
ject very probable, Miss Wade.” 

“ I hate him,” she returned. “Worse 
than his wife, because I was once dupe 
enough, and false enough to myself, 
almost to love him. You have seen 
me, sir, only on commonplace occa- 
sions, when I dare say you have thought 
me a commonplace woman, a little 
more self-willed than the generality. 
You don’t know what I mean by hating, 
if you know me no better than that ; 
you can’t know, without knowing with 
what care I have studied myself, and 
people about me. For this reason I 
have for some time inclined to tell you 
what my life has been, — not to propi- 


tiate your opinion, for I set no value 
on it, but that you may comprehend, 
when you think of your dear friend and 
his dear wife, what I mean by hating. 
Shall I give you something I have 
written and put by for your perusal, or 
shall I hold my hand? ” 

Arthur begged her to give it to him. 
She went to the bureau, unlocked it, 
and took from an inner drawer a few 
folded sheets of paper. Without any 
conciliation of him, scarcely addressing 
him, rather speaking as if she were 
speaking to her own looking-glass for 
the justification of her own stubbornness, 
she said, as she gave them to him : — 

“ Now you may know what I mean 
by hating ! No more of that. Sir, 
whether you find me temporarily and 
cheaply lodging in an empty London 
house or in a Calais apartment, you find 
Harriet with me. You may like to see 
her before you leave. Harriet, come 
in ! ” She called Harriet again. The 
second call produced Harriet, once 
Tattycoram. 

“ Here is Mr. Clennam,” said Miss 
Wade; “not come for you; he has 
given you up. — I suppose you have, by 
this time?” 

“ Having no authority or influence, — 
yes,” assented Clennam. 

“Not come in search of you, you see ; 
but still seeking some one. He wants 
that Blandois man.” 

“ With whom I saw you in the Strand 
in London,” hinted Arthur. 

“ If you know anything of him, Har- 
riet, except that he came from Venice 
— which we all know — tell it to Mr. 
Clennam freely.” 

“I know nothing more about him,” 
said the girl. 

“Are you satisfied?” Miss Wade 
inquired of Arthur. 

He had no reason to disbelieve them ; 
the girl’s manner being so natural as 
to be almost convincing, if he had had 
any previous doubts. He replied, “ I 
must seek for intelligence elsewhere.” 

He was not going in the same breath, 
but he had risen before the girl entered, 
and she evidently thought he was. She 
looked quickly at him, and said, — 

“ Are they well, sir ? ” 

“Who?” 


384 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


She stopped herself in saying what 
would have been “ all of them ” ; 
glanced at Miss Wade ; and said “ Mr. 
and Mrs. Meagles.” 

“ They were, when I last heard of 
them. They are not at home. By the 
way, let me ask you. Is it true that 
you were seen there? ” 

“ Where ? Where does any one say 
I w-as seen ? ” returned the girl, sullenly 
casting down her eyes. 

“ Looking in at the garden gate of the 
cottage? ” 

“ No,” said Miss Wade. “ She has 
never been near it.” 

“ You are wrong, then,” said the 
girl. “ I went down there, the last 
time we were in London. I went one 
afternoon when you left me alone. 
And I did look in.” 

“ You poor-spirited girl,” returned 
Miss Wade, with infinite contempt ; 
“does all our companionship, do all 
our conversations, do all your old com- 
plainings, tell for so little as that ? ” 

“ There was no harm in looking in at 
the gate for an instant,” said the girl. 
“ I saw by the window's that the family 
were not there.” 

“ Why should you go near the 
place ? ” 

“ Because I wanted to see it. Be- 
cause I felt that I should like to look at 
it again.” 

As each of the two handsome faces 
looked at the other, Clennam felt how 
each of the two natures must be con- 
stantly tearing the other to pieces. 

“ Oh ! ” said Miss Wade, coldly sub- 
duing and removing her glance; “if 
you had any desire to see the place 
where you led the life from w'hich I res- 
cued you because you had found out 
what it was, that is another thing. But, 
is that your truth to me ? Is that your 
fidelity to me? Is that the common 
cause I make with you? You are not 
worth the confidence I have placed in 
ou. You are not worth the favor I 
ave shown you. You are no higher 
than a spaniel, and had better go back 
to the people who did W'orse than whip 
you.” 

“ If you speak so of them with any 
one else by to hear, you ’ll provoke me 
to take their part,” said the girl. 


“ Go back to them,” Miss Wade re- 
torted, — “ go back to them.” 

“You know very well,” retorted 
Harriet, in her turn, “that I won’t go 
back to them. You know very well 
that I have thrown them off, and never 
can, never shall, never w'ill go back to 
them. Let them alone, then, Miss 
Wade.” 

“You prefer their plenty to your less 
fat living here,” she rejoined. “ You 
exalt them and slight me. What else 
should I have expected? I ought to 
have known it.” 

“ It ’s not so,” said the girl, flushing 
high, “and you don’t say what you 
mean. I know what you mean. You 
are reproaching me, underhanded, with 
having nobody but you to look to. And 
because I have nobody but you to look 
to, you think you are to make me do, or 
not do, everything you please, and are 
to put any affront upon me. You are 
as bad as they were, every bit. But I 
will not be quite tamed and made sub- 
missive. I will say again that I w'ent 
to look at the house, because I had of- 
ten thought that I should like to see it 
once more. I will ask again how they 
are, because I once liked them, and at 
times thought they were kind to me.” 

Hereupon Clennam said that he was 
sure they would still receive her kindly, 
if she should ever desire to return. 

“ Never ! ” said the girl, passionately. 
“ I shall never do that. Nobody knows 
that better than Miss Wade, though 
she taunts me because she has made 
me her dependant. And I know I am 
so ; and I know she is overjoyed when 
she can bring it to my mind.” 

“ A good pretence ! ” said Miss 
Wade, with no less anger, haughtiness, 
and bitterness ; “but too threadbare to 
cover what I plainly see in this. My 
poverty will not bear competition with 
their money. Better go back at once, 
better go back at once, and have done 
w’ith it ! ” 

Arthur Clennam looked at them, 
standing a little distance asunder in the 
dull confined room, each proudly cher- 
ishing her own anger ; each, with a 
fixed determination, torturing her own 
breast, and torturing the other’s. He 
said a word or two of leave-taking; 



MISS WADE AND TATTYCORAM. 




LITTLE DORRIT. 


but Miss Wade barely inclined lier 
head, and Harriet, with the assumed 
humiliation of an abject dependant and 
serf (but not without defiance for all 
that), made as if she were too low to 
notice or to be noticed. 

He came down the dark winding 
stairs into the yard, with an increased 
sense upon him of the gloom of the 
wall that was dead, and of the shrubs 
that were dead, and of the fountain that 
was dry, and of the statue that was 
gone. Pondering much on what he had 
seen and heard in that house, as well as 
on the failure of all his efforts to trace 
the suspicious character who was lost, 
he returned to London and to England 
by the packet that had taken him over. 
On the way he unfolded the sheets of 
paper, and read in them what is repro- 
duced in the next chapter. 


CHAPTER XXI. 

THE HISTORY OF A SELF-TORMENTOR. 

I have the misfortune of not being a 
fool. From a very early age I have de- 
tected what those about me thought they 
hid from me. If I could have been 
habitually imposed upon, instead of 
habitually discerning the truth, I might 
have lived as smoothly as most fools 
do. 

My childhood was passed with a 
grandmother ; that is to say, with a 
j lady who represented that relative to 
me, and who took that title on herself. 
She had no claim to it, but I — being to 
that extent a little fool — had no suspi- 
cion of her. She had some children of 
her own family in her house, and some 
children of other people. All girls ; ten 
in number, including me. We all lived 
together and were educated together. 

I must have been about twelve years 
old when I began to see how deter- 
minedly those girls patronized me. I was 
told I was an orphan. There was no 
other orphan among us ; and I perceived 
, (here was the first disadvantage of not 
' being a fool) that they conciliated me 
in an insolent pity, and in a sense of 
j superiority. I did not set this down as 

• 25 


3S5 

a discovery ; rashly, I tried them often. 
I could hardly make them quarrel with 
me. When I succeeded with any of 
them, they were sui-e to come after an 
hour or two, and begin a reconciliation. 
I tried them over and over again, and I 
never knew them wait for me to begin. 
They were always forgiving me, in their 
vanity and condescension. Little im- 
ages of grown people ! 

One of them was my chosen friend. 
I loved that stupid mite in a passionate 
way that she could no more deserve 
than I can remember without feeling 
ashamed of, though I was but a child. 
She had w'hat they called an amiable 
temper, an affectionate temper. She 
could distribute, and did distribute, pret- 
ty looks and smiles to every one among 
them. I believe there was not a soul 
in the place, except myself, who knew 
that she did it purposely to wound and 
gall me ! 

Nevertheless, I so loved that unwor- 
thy girl, that my life was made stormy 
by my fondness for her. I was con- 
stantly lectured and disgraced for what 
was called “trying her”; in other 
words, charging her with her little per- 
fidy and throwing her into tears by 
showing her that I read her heart. 
However, I loved her, faithfully ; and 
one time I went home with her for the 
holidays. 

She was worse at home than she had 
been at school. She had a crowd of 
cousins and acquaintances, and we "had 
dances at her house, and went out to 
dances at other houses, and, both at 
home and out, she tormented my love 
beyond endurance. Her plan was, to 
make them all fond of her, — and so 
drive me wild with jealousy. To be fa- 
miliar and endearing with them all, — 
and so make me mad with envying 
them. When we were left alone in our 
bedroom at night, I would reproach her 
with my perfect knowledge of her base- 
ness ; and then she would cry and cry 
and say I was cruel, and then I would 
hold her in my arms till morning : lov- 
ing her as much as ever, and often feel- 
ing as if, rather than suffer so, I could 
so hold her in my arms and plunge to 
the bottom of a river, — where I would 
still hold her, after we were both dead. 


386 


LITTLE DORR IT. 


It came to an end, and I was relieved. 
In the family, there was an aunt, who 
was not fond of me. I doubt if any of 
the family liked me much ; but I never 
wanted them to like me, being alto- 
gether bound up in the one girl. The 
aunt was a young woman, and she had 
a serious way with her eyes of watching 
me. She was an audacious woman, and 
openly looked compassionately at me. 
After one of the nights that I have 
spoken of, I came down into a green- 
house before breakfast. Charlotte (the 
name of my false young friend) had gone 
down before me, and I heard this aunt 
speaking to her about me as I entered. 
1 stopped where I was, among the 
leaves, and listened. 

The aunt said, “Charlotte, Miss 
Wade is wearing you to death, and this 
must not continue.” I repeat the very 
words I heard. 

Now, what did she answer? Did she 
say, “ It is I who am wearing her to 
death, I who am keeping her on a rack 
and am the executioner, yet she tells me 
every night that she loves me devotedly, 
though she knows what I make her un- 
dergo ” ? No ; my first memorable ex- 
perience was true to what I knew her to 
be, and to all my experience. She be- 
gan sobbing and weeping (to secure the 
aunt’s sympathy to herself, and said, 
“ Dear aunt, she has an unhappy tem- 
per ; other girls at school, besides I, 
try hard to make it better ; we all try 
hard.” 

Upon that the aunt fondled her, as 
if she had said something noble instead 
of despicable and false, and kept up the 
infamous pretence by replying, “ But 
there are reasonable limits, my dear love, 
to everything, and I see that this poor 
miserable girl causes you more constant 
and useless distress than even so good 
an effort justifies.” 

The poor miserable girl came out of 
her concealment, as you may be pre- 
pared to hear, and said, “ Send me 
home.” I never said another word to 
either of them, or to any of them, but 
“ Send me home, or I will walk home 
alone, night and day ! ” When I got 
home, I told my supposed grandmother 
that, unless I was sent away to finish 
my education somewhere else, before 


that girl came back, or before any one 
of them came back, I would burn my 
sight away by throwing myself into the 
fire, rather than I would endure to look 
at their plotting faces. 

I went among young women next, 
and I found them no better. Fair 
words and fair pretences ; but I pen- 
etrated below those assertions of them- 
selves and depreciations of me, and they 
were no better. Before I left them, I 
learned that I had no grandmother and 
no recognized relation. I carried the 
light of that information both into my 
past and into my future. It showed me 
many new occasions on which people 
triumphed over me, when they made a 
pretence of treating me with considera- 
tion, or doing me a service. 

A man of business had a small prop- 
erty in trust for me. I was to be a gov- 
erness. I became a governess ; and 
went into the family of a poor noble- 
man, where there were two daughters 
— little children, but the parents wished 
them to grow up, if possible, under one 
instructress. The mother was young 
and pretty. From the first, she made 
a show of behaving to me with great 
delicacy. I kept my resentment to my- 
self ; but I knew very well that it was her 
way of petting the knowledge that she 
was my Mistress, and might have be- 
haved differently to her servant if it had 
been her fancy. 

I say I did not resent it, nor did I ; 
but I showed her, by not gratifying 
her, that I understood her. When she 
pressed me to take wine I took water. 
If there happened to be anything choice 
at table, she always sent it to me ; but 
I always declined it, and ate of the re- 
jected dishes. These disappointments 
of her patronage were a sharp retort, 
and made me feel independent. 

I liked the children. They were 
timid, but on the whole disposed to at- 
tach themselves to me. There was a 
nurse, however, in the house, a rosy- 
faced woman always making an obtru- 
sive pretence of being gay and good-hu- 
mored, who had nursed them both, and 
who had secured their affections before 
I saw them. I could almost have set- 
tled down to my fate but for this woman. 
Her artful devices for keeping herself 


LITTLE DORR IT, 


387 


before the children in constant compe- 
tition with me might have blinded 
many in my place ; but I saw through 
them from the first. On the pretext of 
arranging my rooms and waiting on me 
and taking care of my wardrobe (all of 
which she did busily), she was never 
absent. The most crafty of her many 
subtleties was her feint of seeking to 
make the children fonder of me. She 
would lead them to me, and coax them 
to me. “ Come to good Miss Wade, 
come to dear Miss Wade, come to pret- 
ty Miss Wade. She loves you very 
much. Miss Wade is a clever lady who 
has read heaps of books, and can tell 
you far better and more interesting sto- 
ries than I know. Come and hear Miss 
Wade!” How could I engage their 
attention when my heart was burning 
against these ignorant designs? How 
could I wonder when I saw their inno- 
cent faces shrinking away, and their 
arms twining round her neck, instead of 
mine ? Then she would look up at me, 
shaking their curls from her face, and 
say, “ They ’ll come round soon, Miss 
Wade ; they ’re very simple and loving, 
ma’am ; — don’t be at all cast down 
about it, ma’am,” — exulting over me ! 

There was another thing the woman 
did. At times, when she saw that she 
had safely plunged me into a black de- 
spondent brooding by these means, she 
would call the attention of the children 
to it, and would show them the differ- 
ence between herself and me. “ Hush ! 
Poor Miss Wade is not well. Don’t 
make a noise, my dears, her head aches. 
Come and comfort her. Come and ask 
her if she is better ; come and ask her 
to lie down. I hope you have nothing 
on your mind, ma’am. Don’t take on, 
ma’am, and be sorry ! ” 

It became intolerable. Her ladyship 
my mistress coming in one day when 
I was alone, and at the height of feel- 
ing that I could support it no longer, 

I told her I must go. I could not bear 
the presence of that woman Dawes. 

“ Miss Wade ! Poor Dawes is devot- 
ed to you ; would do anything for you ! ” 

I knew beforehand she would say so ; 
I was quite prepared for it ; I only an- 
swered, it was not for me to contradict 
my mistress ; I must go. 


“ I hope, Miss Wade,” she returned, 
instantly assuming the tone of superior- 
ity she had always so thinly concealed, 
“ that nothing I have ever said or done 
since we have been together has justi- 
fied your use of that disagreeable word, 
‘ mistress.’ It must have been wholly 
inadvertent on my part. Pray tell me 
what it is.” 

I replied that I had no complaint to 
make, either of my mistress or to my 
mistress ; but I must go. 

She hesitated a moment, and then sat 
down beside me, and laid her hand on 
mine. As if that honor would obliter- 
ate any remembrance ! 

“ Miss Wade, I fear you are unhap- 
py, through causes over which I have 
no influence.” 

I smiled, thinking of the experience 
the word awakened, and said, “ I have 
an unhappy temper, I suppose.” 

“ I did not say that.” 

“ It is an easy way of accounting for 
anything,” said I. 

“It may be ; but I did not say so. 
What I wish to approach is something 
very different. My husband and I 
have exchanged some remarks upon the 
subject, when we have observed with 
pain that you have not been easy with 
us.” 

“Easy? Oh! You are such great 
people, my lad}-,” said I. 

“ I am unfortunate in using a word 
which may convey a meaning — and 
evidently does — quite opposite to my 
intention.” (She had not expected my 
reply, and it shamed her.) “ I only 
mean, not happy with us. It is a diffi- 
cult topic to enter on ; but from one 
young woman to another, perhaps — in 
short, we have been apprehensive that 
you may allow some family circumstan- 
ces, of which no one can be more inno- 
cent than yourself, to prey upon your 
spirits. If so, let us entreat you not to 
make them a cause of grief. My hus- 
band himself, as is well known, former- 
ly had a very dear sister who was not in 
law his sister, but who was universally 
beloved and respected — ” 

I saw directly that they had taken 
me in for the sake of the dead woman, 
whoever she was, and to have that boast 
of me and advantage of me ; I saw, in 


388 


LITTLE DOER IT. 


the nurse’s knowledge of it, an encour- 
agement to goad me as she had done ; 
and I saw, in the children’s shrinking 
away, a vague impression that I was not 
like other people. I left that house that 
night. 

After one or two short and very 
similar experiences, which are not to the 
present purpose-, I entered another fam- 
ily where I had but one pupil, a girl 
of fifteen, who was the only daughter. 
The parents here were elderly people ; 
people of station and rich. A nephew 
whom they had brought up was a fre- 
quent visitor at the house, among many 
other visitors ; and he began to pay me 
attention. I was resolute in repulsing 
him ; for I had determined, when I 
went there, that no one should pity me 
or condescend to me. But he wrote 
me a letter. It led to our being engaged 
to be married. 

He was a year younger than I, and 
young-looking even when that allowance 
was made. He was on absence from 
India, where he had a post that was 
soon to grow into a very good one. I n 
six months we were to be married, and 
were to go to India. I was to stay in 
the house, and was to be married from 
the house. Nobody objected to any 
part of the plan. 

I cannot avoid saying, he admired 
me ; but, if I could, I would. Vanity 
has nothing to do with the declaration, 
for his admiration worried me. He 
took no pains to hide it; and caused 
me to feel among the rich people as if 
he had bought me for my looks, and 
made a show of his purchase to justify 
himself. They appraised me in their 
own minds, I saw, and were curious to 
ascertain what my full value was. I 
resolved that they should not know. I 
was immovable and silent before them ; 
and would have suffered any one of them 
to kill me sooner than I would have laid 
myself out to bespeak their approval. 

He told me I did not do myself jus- 
tice. I told him I did, and it was be- 
cause I did and meant to do so to the 
last, that I would not stoop to propitiate 
any of them. He was concerned and 
even shocked, when I added that I 
wished he would not parade his attach- 
ment before them ; but he said he 


would sacrifice even the honest impulses 
of his affection to my peace. 

Under that pretence, he began to 
retort upon me. By the hour together, 
he would keep at a distance from me, 
talking to any one rather than to me. 

I have sat alone and unnoticed, half an 
evening, while he conversed with his 
young cousin, my pupil. I have seen 
all the while, in people’s eyes, that they 
thought the two looked nearer on an 
equality than he and I. I have sat, 
divining their thoughts, until I have felt 
that his young appearance made me 
ridiculous, and have raged against my- 
self for ever loving him. 

For I did love him once. Unde- 
serving as he was, and little as he 
thought of all these agonies that it cost 
me, — agonies which should have made 
him wholly and gratefully mine to his 
life’s end, — I loved him. I bore with 
his cousin’s praising him to my face, 
and with her pretending to think that 
it pleased me, but full well knowing 
that it rankled in my breast, for his 
sake. While I have sat in his pres- 
ence. recalling all my slights and wrongs, 
and deliberating whether I should not 
fly from the house at once and never 
see him again, — I have loved him. 

His aunt (my mistress, you will please 
to remember) deliberately, wilfully, 
added to my trials and vexations. It 
was her delight to expatiate on the style 
in which we were to live in India, and on 
the establishment we should keep, and 
the company we should entertain, when 
he got his advancement. My pride 
rose against this barefaced way of point- 
ing out the contrast my married life was 
to present to my then dependent and 
inferior position. I suppressed my in- . 
dignation ; but I showed her that her 
intention was not lost upon me, and I 
repaid her annoyances by affecting 
humility. What she described would 
surely be a great deal too much honor 
for me, I would tell her. I was afraid 
I might not be able to support so great 
a change. Think of a mere governess, 
her daughter’s governess, coming to 
that high distinction ! It. made her un- 
easy and made them all uneasy, when 
I answered in this way. They knew 
that I fully understood her. 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


It was at the time when my troubles 
were at their highest, and when I was 
most incensed against my lover for his 
ingratitude in caring as little as he did 
for the innumerable distresses and mor- 
tifications I underwent on his account, 
that your dear friend, Mr. -Go wan, ap- 
peared at the house. He had been in- 
timate there for a long time, but had 
been abroad. He understood the state 
of things at a glance, and he under- 
stood me. 

He was the first person I had ever 
seen in my life who had understood 
me. He was not in the house three 
times before I knew that he accompa- 
nied every movement of my mind. In 
his coldly easy way with all of them, 
and with me, and with the whole sub- 
ject, I saw it clearly. In his light prot- 
estations of admiration of my future 
husband, in his enthusiasm regarding 
our engagement and our prospects, in 
his hopeful congratulations on our fu- 
ture wealth and his despondent refer- 
ences to his own poverty, — all equally 
hollow, and jesting, and full of mockery, 
— I saw it clearly. He made me feel 
more and more resentful, and more and 
more contemptible, by always present- 
ing to me everything that surrounded 
me, with some new hateful light upon 
it, while he pretended to exhibit it in 
its best aspect for my admiration and 
his own. He was like the dressed-up 
Death in the Dutch series ; whatever 
figure he took upon his arm, whether it 
was youth or age, beauty or ugliness, 
whether he danced with it, sang with it, 
played with it, or prayed with it, he 
made it ghastly. 

You will understand, then, that when 
your dear friend complimented me, he 
really condoled with me ; that when he 
soothed me under my vexations, he laid 
bare every smarting wound I had ; 
that when he declared my “ faithful 
swain ” to be “ the most loving young 
fellow in the world, with the tenderest 
heart that ever beat,” he touched my 
old misgiving that I was made ridicu- 
lous. These were not great services, 
you may say. They were acceptable 
to me, because they echoed my own 
mind, and confirmed my own knowl- 
edge. I soon began to like the society 


389 

of your dear friend better than any 
other. 

When I perceived (which I did, al- 
most as soon) that jealousy was growing 
out of this, I liked this society still 
better. Had I not been subjected to 
jealousy, and were the endurances to 
be all mine ? No. Let him know what 
it was ! I was delighted that he should 
know it ; I was delighted that he should 
feel keenly, and I hoped he did. More 
than that. He was tame in compari- 
son with Mr. Gowan, who knew how 
to address me on equal terms, and how 
to anatomize the wretched people round 
us. 

This went on, until the aunt, my mis- 
tress, took it upon herself to speak to 
me. It was scarcely worth alluding 
to ; she knew I meant nothing ; but 
she suggested from herself, knowing it 
was only necessary to suggest, that it 
might be better if I were a little less 
companionable with Mr. Gowan. 

I asked her how she could answer for 
what I meant ? She could always an- 
swer, she replied, for my meaning noth- 
ing wrong. I thanked her, but I said 
I would prefer to answer for myself, 
and to myself. Her other servants 
would probably be grateful for good 
characters, but I wanted none. 

Other conversation followed, and in- 
duced me to ask her how she knew that 
it was only necessary for her to make a 
suggestion to me, to have it obeyed? 
Did she presume on my birth, or on 
my hire? I was not bought, body 
and soul. She seemed to think that 
her distinguished nephew had gone into 
a slave-market and purchased a wife. 

It would probably have come, sooner 
or later, to the end to which it did 
come, but she brought it to its issue at 
once. She told me, with assumed com- 
miseration, that I had an unhappy tem- 
per. On this repetition of the old 
wicked injury, I withheld no longer, 
but exposed to her all I had known of 
her and seen in her, and all I had un- 
dergone wfithin myself since I had oc- 
cupied the despicable position of being 
engaged to her nephew. I told her 
that Mr. Gowan was the only relief I 
had had in my degradation ; that I had 
borne it too long, and that I shook it off 


39 ° 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


too late ; but that I would see none of 
them more. And I never did. 

Your dear friend followed me to my 
retreat, and was very droll on the sever- 
ance of the connection ; though he was 
sorry, too, for the excellent people (in 
their way the best he had ever met), and 
deplored the necessity of breaking mere 
house-flies on the wheel. He protest- 
ed before long, and far more truly than 
I then supposed, that he was not worth 
acceptance by a woman of such endow- 
ments, and such power of character; 
but — well, well ! — 

Your dear friend amused me and 
amused himself as long as it suited his 
inclinations; and then reminded me 
that we were both people of the world, 
that we both understood mankind, that 
we both knew there was no such thing 
as romance, that we were both prepared 
for going different ways to seek our for- 
tunes like people of sense, and that we 
both foresaw that whenever we encoun- 
tered one another again we should meet 
as the best friends on earth. So he 
said, and I did not contradict him. 

It was not very long before I found 
that he was courting his present wife, 
and that she had been taken away to 
be out of his reach. I hated her then, 
quite as much as I hate her now ; and 
naturally, therefore, could desire nothing 
better than that she should marry him. 
But I was restlessly curious to look at 
her, — so curious that I felt it to be one 
of the few sources of entertainment left 
to me. I travelled a little ; travelled 
until I found myself in her society, and 
in yours. Your dear friend, I think, 
was not known to you then, and had not 
given you any of those signal marks of 
his friendship which he has bestowed 
upon you. 

In that company I found a girl, in 
various circumstances of whose position 
there was a singular likeness to my own, 
and in whose character I was interested 
and pleased to see much of the rising 
against s woll en patronage an d selfishn ess, 
calling themselves kindness, protection, 
benevolence, and other fine names, which 
I have described as inherent in my na- 
ture. I often heard it said, too, that she 
had “ an unhappy temper.” Well un- 
derstanding what was meant by the con- 


venient phrase, and wanting a compan- 
ion with a knowledge of what I knew, I 
thought I would try to release the girl 
from her bondage and sense of injustice. 
I have no occasion to relate that I suc- 
ceeded. 

We have been together ever since, 
sharing my small means. 


CHAPTER XXII. 

WHO PASSES BY THIS ROAD SO LATE? 

Arthur Clennam had made his 
unavailing expedition to Calais in the 
midst of a great pressure of business. 
A certain barbaric Power with valuable 
ossessions on the map of the world 
ad occasion for the services of one or 
two engineers, quick in invention and 
determinedin execution, — practicalmen, 
who could make the men and means 
their ingenuity perceived to be wanted, 
out of the best materials they could find 
at hand ; and who were as bold and 
fertile in the adaptation of such materi- 
als to their purpose as in the concep- 
tion of their purpose itself. This Pow- 
er, being a barbaric one, had no idea 
of stowing away a great national object 
in a Circumlocution Office, as strong 
wine is hidden from the light in a cel- 
lar, until its fire and youth are gone, 
and the laborers who worked in the 
vineyard and pressed the grapes are 
dust. With characteristic ignorance, 
it acted on the most decided and ener- 
getic notions of How to do it ; and 
never showed the least respect for, or 
gave any quarter to, the great political 
science How not to do it. Indeed, it 
had a barbarous w-ay of striking the 
latter art and mystery dead, in the per- 
son of any enlightened subject who 
practised it. 

Accordingly, the men w-ho were 
wanted were sought out and found : 
which was in itself a most uncivilized 
and irregular way of proceeding. Being 
found, they were treated with great 
confidence and honor (which again 
showed dense political ignorance), and 
were invited to come at once and do 
what they had to do. In short, they 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


39i 


were regarded as men who meant to 
do it, engaging with other men who 
meant it to be done. 

Daniel Doyce was one of the chosen. 
There was no foreseeing at that time 
whether he would be absent months, 
or years. The preparations for his 
departure, and the conscientious ar- 
rangement for him of all the details and 
results of their joint business, had ne- 
cessitated labor within a short compass 
of time, which had occupied Clennam 
day and ni^ht. He had slipped across 
the water in his first leisure, and had 
slipped as quickly back again for his 
farewell interview with Doyce. 

Him Arthur now showed, with pains 
and care, the state of their gains and 
losses, responsibilities and prospects. 
Daniel went through it all in his patient 
manner, and admired it all exceedingly. 
He audited the accounts, as if they 
were a far more ingenious piece of 
mechanism than he had ever construct- 
ed, and afterwards stood looking at 
them, weighing his hat over his head 
by the brims, as if he were absorbed 
in the contemplation of some wonder- 
ful engine. 

“ It ’s all beautiful, Clennam, in its 
regularity and order. Nothing can be 
plainer. Nothing can be better.” 

“ I am glad you approve, Doyce. 
Now, as to the management of our 
capital while you are away, and as to 
the conversion of so much of it as 
the business may need from time to 
time — ” His partner stopped him. 

“ As to that, and as to Everything 
else of that kind, all rests with you. 
You will continue ir> all such matters 
to act for both of us, as you have done 
hitherto, and to lighten my mind of a 
load it is much relieved from.” 

“Though, as I often tell you,” re- 
turned Clennam, “ you unreasonably 
depreciate your business qualities.” 

“ Perhaps so,” said Doyce, smiling. 
“And perhaps not. Anyhow, I have 
a calling that I have studied more than 
such matters, and that I am better 
fitted for. I have perfect confidence 
in my partner, and I am satisfied that 
he will do what is best. If I have a 
prejudice connected with money and 
money figures,” continued Doyce, lay- 


ing that plastic workman’s thumb of his 
on the lappel of his partner’s coat, “it 
is against speculating. I don’t think 
I have any other. I dare say I enter- 
tain that prejudice, only because I have 
never given my mind fully to the sub- 
ject.” 

“ But you should n’t call it a preju- 
dice,” said Clennam. “ My dear 
Doyce, it is the soundest sense.” 

“I amglad you think so,” returned 
Doyce, with his gray eye, looking kind 
and bright. 

“ It so happens,” said Clennam, 
“ that just now, not half an hour before 
you came down, I was saying the same 
thing to Pancks, who looked in here. 
We both agreed that, to travel out of 
safe investments, is one of the most 
dangerous, as it is one of the most 
common, of those follies which often 
deserve the name of vices.” 

“ Pancks ? ” said Doyce, tilting up his 
hat at the back, and nodding with an 
air of confidence. “ Ay, ay, ay ! That ’s 
a cautious fellow.” 

“He is a very cautious fellow in- 
deed,” returned Arthur. “ Quite a 
specimen of caution.” 

They both appeared to derive a larger 
amount of satisfaction from the cautious 
character of Mr. Pancks than was quite 
intelligible, judged by the surface of 
their conversation. 

“And now,” said Daniel, looking at 
his watch, “as time and tide wait for 
no one, my trusty partner, and as I am 
ready for starting, bag and baggage, at 
the gate below, let me say a last word. 
I want you to grant a request of mine.” 

“ Any request you can make. — Ex- 
cept,” Clennam was quick with his 
exception, for his partner’s face was 
quick in suggesting it, — “ except that I 
will abandon your invention.” 

“That’s the request, and you know 
it is,” said Doyce. 

“ I say, No, then. I say, positively, 
No. Now that I have begun, I will 
have some definite reason, some respon- 
sible statement, something in the na- 
ture of a real answer, from those peo- 
ple.” 

“ You will not,” relumed Doyce, 
shaking his head. “ Take my word 
for it, you never will.” 


392 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


“ At least, I ’ll try,” said Clennam. 
“ It will do me no harm to try.” 

“ I am not certain of that,” rejoined 
Doyce, laying his hand persuasively on 
his shoulder. “ It has done me harm, 
my friend. It has aged me, tired me, 
vexed me, disappointed me. It does 
no man any good to have his patience 
•worn out, and to think himself ill-used. 
I fancy, even already, that unavailing at- 
tendance on delays and evasions has 
made you something less elastic than 
you used to be.” 

“ Private anxieties may have done 
that for the moment,” said Clennam, 
“but not official harrying. Not yet. 
I am not hurt yet.” 

“ Then you won’t grant my re- 
quest ?” 

“Decidedly, No,” said Clennam. 
“ I should be ashamed if I submitted 
to be so soon driven out of the field, 
where a much older and a much more 
sensitively interested man contended 
with fortitude so long.” 

As there was no moving him, Dan- 
iel Doyce returned the grasp of his 
hand, and, casting a farewell look round 
the counting-house, went down stairs 
with him. Doyce was to go to South- 
ampton to join the small staff of his 
fellow-travellers ; and a coach was at 
the gate, well furnished and packed, 
and ready to take him there. The 
workmen were at the gate to see him 
off, and were mightily proud of him. 
“ Good luck to you, Mr. Doyce ! ” said 
one of the number. “Wherever you 
go, they ’ll find as they ’ve got a man 
among ’em, a man as knows his tools 
and as his tools knows, a man as is will- 
ing and a man as is able, and if that ’s 
not a man, where is a man ! ” This 
oration from a gruff volunteer in the 
background, not previously suspected 
of any powers in that way, was received 
with three loud cheers ; and the speak- 
er became a distinguished character for- 
ever afterwards. In the midst of the 
three loud cheers, Daniel gave them all 
a hearty, “ Good By, Men ! ” and the 
coach disappeared from sight, as if the 
concussion of the air had blown it out 
of Bleeding Heart Yard. 

Mr. Baptist, as a grateful little fellow 
in a pqsition of trust, was among the 


workmen, and had done as much to- 
wards the cheering as a mere foreigner 
could. In truth, no men on earth can 
cheer like Englishmen, who do so 
rally one another’s blood and spirit 
when they cheer in earnest, that the 
stir is like the rush of their whole his- 
tory, with all its standards waving at 
once, from Saxon Alfred’s downward. 
Mr. Baptist had been in a manner 
whirled away before the onset, and was 
taking his breath in quite a scared con- 
dition when Clennam beckoned him to 
follow up stairs, and return the books 
and papers to their places. 

In the lull consequent on the depart- 
ure — in that first vacuity which en- 
sues on every separation, foreshadow- 
ing the great separation that is always 
overhanging all mankind — Arthur 
stood at his desk, looking dreamily out 
at a gleam of sun. But his liberated 
attention soon reverted to the theme 
that was foremost in his thoughts, and 
began, for the hundredth time to dwell 
upon every circumstance that had im- 
pressed itself upon his mind, on the 
mysterious night when he had seen the 
man at his mother’s. Again the man 
jostled him in the crooked street, again 
he followed the man and lost him, again 
he came upon the man in the courtyard 
looking at the house, again he followed 
the man and stood beside him on the 
doorsteps. 

“ Who passes by this road so late ? 
Compagnon de la Majolaine ; 

Who passes by this road so late ? 

Always gay ! ” 

It was not the first time, by many, 
that he had recalled the song of the 
child’s game, of which the fellow had 
hummed this verse while they stood 
side by side ; but he was so uncon- 
scious of having repeated it audibly, 
that he started to hear the next verse, 

“ Of all the king’s knights ’t is the flower, 
Compagnon de la Majolaine ; 

Of all the" king’s knights ’tis the flower, 
Always gay ! ” 

Cavalletto had deferentially suggested 
the words and tune ; supposing him to 
have stopped short for want of more. 

“Ah! You know the song, Caval- 
letto?” 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


393 


“ By Bacchus, yes, sir ! They all 
know it in France. I have heard it 
many times, sung by the little children. 
The last time when it I have heard,” 
said Mr. Baptist, formerly Cavalletto, 
who usually went back to his native 
construction of sentences when his 
memory went near home, “ is from a 
sweet little voice. A little voice, very 
pretty, very innocent. Altro ! ” 

“The last time I heard it,” returned 
Arthur, “was in a voice quite the re- 
verse of pretty, and quite the reverse 
of innocent.” He said it more to 
himself than to his companion, and 
added to himself, repeating the man’s 
next words. “ Death of my life, sir, 
it ’s my character to be impatient ! ” 

“EH ! ” cried Cavalletto, astounded, 
and with all his color gone in a moment. 

“ What is the matter? ” 

“ Sir ! You know where I have 
heard that song the last time?” 

With his rapid native action, his 
hands made the outline of a high hook 
nose, pushed his eyes near together, 
dishevelled his hair, puffed out his 
upper lip to represent a thick mustache, 
and threw the heavy end of an ideal 
cloak over his shoulder. While doing 
this, with a swiftness incredible to one 
who has not watched an Italian peas- 
ant, he indicated a very remarkable 
and sinister smile. The whole change 
passed over him like a flash of light, 
and he stood in the same instant, pale 
and astonished, before his patron. 

“ In the name of fate and wonder,” 
said Clennam, “what do you mean? 
Do you know a man of the name of 
Blandois? ” 

“ No ! ” said Mr. Baptist, shaking 
his head. 

“You have just now described a man 
who was by when you heard that song ; 
have you not ? ” 

“Yes!” said Mr. Baptist, nodding 
fifty times. 

“ And was he not called Blandois? ” 

“No!” said Mr. Baptist. “Altro, 
Altro, Altro, Altro!” He could not 
reject the name sufficiently, with his 
head and his right forefinger going at 
once. 

“ Stay ! ” cried Clennam, spreading 
out the handbill on his desk. “Was 


this the man? You can understand 
what I read aloud?” 

“Altogether. Perfectly.” 

“ But look at it, too. Come here and 
look over me, while I read.” 

Mr. Baptist approached, followed 
every word with his quick eyes, saw 
and heard it all out with the greatest 
impatience, then clapped his two hands 
flat upon the bill as if he had fiercely 
caught some noxious creature, and 
cried, looking eagerly at Clennam, “.It 
is the man ! Behold him ! ” 

“This is of far greater moment to 
me,” said Clennam, in great agitation, 
“ than you can imagine. Tell me where 
you knew the man.” 

Mr. Baptist, releasing the paper very 
slowly and with much discomfiture, and 
drawing himself back two or three 
paces, and making as though he dusted 
his hands, returned, very much against 
his will, — 

“At Marsiglia — Marseilles.” 

“What was he?” 

“ A prisoner, and — Altro ! I believe 
yes ! — an ” — Mr. Baptist crept closer 
again to whisper it — “ Assassin ! ” 

Clennam fell back as if the word had 
struck him a blow, so terrible did it 
make his mother’s communication with 
the man appear. Cavalletto dropped 
on one knee, and implored him, with 
a redundancy of gesticulation, to hear 
what had brought himself into such 
foul company. 

He told with perfect truth how it had 
come of a little contraband trading, and 
how he had in time been released from 
prison, and how he had gone away from 
those antecedents. How, at the house 
of entertainment called the Break of 
Day at Chalons on the Saone, he had 
been aw’akened in his bed at night, by 
the same assassin then assuming the 
name of Lagnier, though his name had 
formerly been Rigaud ; how the assas- 
sin had proposed that they should join 
their fortunes together ; how he held 
the assassin in such dread and aversion 
that he had fled from him at daylight, 
and how he had ever since been haunt- 
ed by the fear of seeing the assassin 
again, and being claimed by him as an 
acquaintance. When he had related 
this, with an emphasis and poise on the 


394 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


word “assassin,” peculiarly belonging 
to his own language, and which did not 
serve to render it less terrible to Clen- 
nam, he suddenly sprang to his feet, 
pounced upon the bill again, and with 
a vehemence- that would have been 
absolute madness in any man of North- 
ern origin, cried, “ Behold the same 
assassin ! Here he is ! ” 

In his passionate raptures, he at first 
forgot the fact that he had lately seen 
the assassin in London. On his re- 
membering it, it suggested hope to 
Clennam that the recognition might 
be of later date than the night of the 
visit at his mother’s ; but Cavalletto 
was too exact and clear about time and 
place to leave any opening for doubt 
that it had preceded that occasion. 

“ Listen,” said Arthur, very seriously. 
“ This man, as we have read here, has 
wholly disappeared.” 

“ Of it I am well content ! ” said Ca- 
valletto, raising his eyes piously. “ A 
thousand thanks to Heaven ! Accursed 
assassin ! ” 

“Not so,” returned Clennam; “for 
until something more is heard of him, I 
can never know an hour’s peace.” 

“ Enough, Benefactor ; that is quite 
another thing. A million of excuses ! ” 

“ Now, Cavalletto,” said Clennam, 
gently turning him by the arm, so that 
they looked into each other’s eyes. “ I 
am certain that for the little I have been 
able to do for you, you are the most sin- 
cerely grateful of men.” 

“ I swear it ! ” cried the other. 

“I know it. If you could find this 
man, or discover what has become of 
him, or gain any later intelligence what- 
ever of him, you would render me a ser- 
vice above any other service I could re- 
ceive in the world, and would make me 
(with far greater reason) as grateful to 
you as you are to me.” 

“ I know not where to look,” cried the 
little man, kissing Arthur’s hand in a 
transport. “ I know not where to be- 
gin. I know not where to go. But, 
courage ! Enough ! It matters not ! 
I go, in this instant of time ! ” 

“Not a word to any one but me, 
Cavalletto.” 

“ Al-tro ! ” cried Cavalletto. And 
was gone with great speed. 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

MISTRESS AFFERY MAKES A CONDI- 
TIONAL PROMISE RESPECTING HER 

DREAMS. 

Left alone, with the expressive looks 
and gestures of Mr. Baptist, otherwise 
Giovanni Baptista Cavalletto, vividly 
before him, Clennam entered on a weary 
day. It was in vain that he tried to 
control his attention by directing it to 
any business occupation or train of 
thought ; it rode at anchor by the 
haunting topic, and would hold to no 
other idea. As though a criminal should 
be chained in a stationary boat on a 
deep clear river, condemned, whatever 
countless leagues of water flowed past 
him, always to see the body of the 
fellow-creature he had drowned lying 
at the bottom, immovable, and un- 
changeable, except as the eddies made 
it broad or long, now expanding, now 
contracting its terrible lineaments ; so 
Arthur, below the shifting current of 
transparent thoughts and fancies which 
were gone and succeeded by others as 
soon as come, saw, steady and dark, 
and not to be stirred from its place, the 
one subject that he endeavored with 
all his might to rid himself of, and that 
he could not fly from. 

The assurance he now had, that 
Blandois, whatever his right name, was 
one of the worst of characters, greatly 
augmented the burden of his anxieties. 
Though the disappearance should be 
accounted for to-morrow, the fact that 
his mother had been in communication 
with such a man would remain un- 
alterable. That the communication 
had been of a secret kind, and that she 
had been submissive to him and afraid 
of him, he hoped might be known to no 
one beyond himself ; yet, knowing it, 
how could he separate it from his old 
vague fears, and how believe that there 
was nothing evil in such relations? 

Her resolution not to enter on the 
question with him, and his knowledge 
of her indomitable character, enhanced 
his sense of helplessness. It was like 
the oppression of a dream, to believe 
that shame and exposure were impend- 
ing over her and his father’s memory, 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


395 


and to be shut out, as by a brazen wall, 
from the possibility of coming to their 
aid. The purpose he had brought home 
to his native country, and had ever 
since kept in view, was, with her great- 
est determination, defeated by his mother 
herself, at the time of all others when 
he feared that it pressed most. His ad- 
vice, energy, activity, money, credit, all 
his resources whatsoever, were all made 
useless. If she had been possessed of 
the old fabled influence, and had turned 
those who looked upon her into stone, 
she could not have rendered him more 
completely powerless (so it seemed to 
him in his distress of mind) than she 
did when she turned her unyielding 
face to his in her gloomy room. 

But the light of that day’s discovery, 
shining on these considerations, roused 
him to take a more decided course of 
action. Confident in the rectitude of 
his purpose, and impelled by a sense of 
overhanging danger closing in around, 
he resolved, if his mother would still 
admit of no approach, to make a des- 
perate appeal to Affery. If she could 
be brought to become communicative, 
and to do what lay in her to break the 
spell of secrecy that enshrouded the 
house, he might shake off the paralysis 
of which every hour that passed over 
his head made him more acutely sen- 
sible. This was the result of his day’s 
anxiety, and this was the decision he 
put in practice when the day closed in. 

His first disappointment, on arriving 
at the house, was to find the door open, 
and Mr. Flintwinch smoking a pipe on 
the steps. If circumstances had been 
commonly favorable, Mistress Affery 
would have opened the door to his 
knock. Circumstances being uncom- 
monly unfavorable, the door stood open, 
and Mi*. Flintwinch was smoking his 
pipe on the steps. 

“ Good evening,” said Arthur. 

“ Good evening,” said Mr. Flint- 
winch. 

The smoke came crookedly out of 
Mr. Flintwinch’s mouth, as if jt cir- 
culated through the whole of his wry 
figure and came back by his wry throat, 
before coming forth to mingle with the 
smoke from the crooked chimneys and 
the mists from the crooked river. 


“ Have you any news? ” said Arthur. 

“ We have no news,” said Jeremiah. 

“ I mean of the foreign man,” Arthur 
explained. 

“/ mean of the foreign man,” said 
Jeremiah. 

He looked so grim, as he stood 
askew, with the knot of his cravat under 
his ear, that the thought passed into 
Clennam’s mind, and not for the first 
time by many, could Flintwinch for a 
purpose of his own have got rid of 
Blandois? Could it have been his se- 
cret and his safety that were at issue ? 
He was small and bent, and perhaps 
not actively strong ; yet he was as tough 
as an old yew-tree, and as crafty as an 
old jackdaw. Such a man, coming be- 
hind a much younger and more vigor- 
ous man, and having the will to put 
an end to him, and no relenting, might 
do it pretty surely in that solitary place 
at a late hour. 

While, in the morbid condition of his 
thoughts, these thoughts drifted over 
the main one that was always in Clen- 
nam’s mind, Mr. Flintwinch, regarding 
the opposite house over the gateway 
with his neck twisted and one eye shut 
up, stood smoking with a vicious ex- 
pression upon him ; more as if he were 
trying to bite off the stem of his pipe, 
than as if he were enjoying it. Yet he 
was enjoying it, in his own way. 

“ You ’ll be able to take my likeness, 
the next time you call, Arthur, I should 
think,” said Mr. Flintwinch, dryly, as 
he stooped to knock the ashes out. 

Rather conscious and confused, Ar- 
thur asked his pardon, if he had stared 
at him impolitely. “ But my mind runs 
so much upon this matter,” he said, 
“that I lose myself.” 

“ Hah ! Yet I don’t see,” returned 
Mr. Flintwinch, quite at his leisure, 
“why it should trouble you, Arthur.” 

“ No?” 

“No,” said Mr. Flintwinch, very 
shortly and decidedly : much as if he 
were of the canine race, and snapped at 
Arthurs hand. 

“ Is it nothing to me to see those 
placards about ? Is it nothing to me to 
see my mother’s name and residence 
hawked up and down, in such an asso- 
ciation? ” 


396 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


“ I don’t see,” returned Mr. Flint- 
winch, scraping his horny cheek, “ that 
it need signify much to you. But I ’ll 
tell you what I do see, Arthur,” glan- 
cing up at the windows ; “ I see the 
light of fire and candle in your mother’s 
room ! ” 

“ And what has that to do with it? ” 

“Why, sir, I read by it,” said Mr. 
Flintwinch, screwing himself at him, 
“that if it’s advisable (as the proverb 
says it is) to let sleeping dogs lie, it ’s 
just as advisable, perhaps, to let miss- 
ing dogs lie. Let ’em be. They gen- 
erally turn up soon enough.” 

Mr. Flintwinch turned short round 
when he had made this remark, and 
went into the dark hall. Clennam stood 
there, following him with his eyes, as 
he dipped for a light in the phosphorus- 
box in the little room at the side, got 
one after three or four dips, and lighted 
the dim lamp against the wall. All the 
while, Clennam was pursuing the proba- 
bilities — rather as if they were being 
shown to him by an invisible hand than 
as if he himself were conjuring them up 
— of Mr. Flintwinch’s ways and means 
of doing that darker deed, and removing 
its traces by any of the black avenues of 
shadow that lay around them. 

“ Now, sir,” said the testy Jeremiah ; 
“ will it be agreeable to walk up stairs? ” 

“ My mother is alone, I suppose ? ” 

“Not alone,” said Mr. Flintwinch. 
“ Mr. Casby and his daughter are with 
her. They came in while I was smok- 
ing, and I stayed behind to have my 
smoke out.” 

This was the second disappointment. 
Arthur made no remark upon it, and 
repaired to his mother’s room, wffiere 
Mr. Casby and Flora had been taking 
tea, anchovy paste, and hot buttered 
toast. The relics of those delicacies 
were not yet removed, either from the 
table, or from the scorched countenance 
of Affery, who, with the kitchen toast- 
ing-fork still in her hand, looked like a 
sort of allegorical personage : ^xcept 
that she had a considerable ad^ntage 
over the general run of such personages 
in point of significant emblematical pur- 
pose. 

Flora had spread her bonnet and 
shawl upon the bed, with a care indica- 


tive of an intention to stay some time. 
Mr. Casby, too, was beaming near the 
hob, with his benevolent knobs shining 
as if the warm butter of the toast were 
exuding through the patriarchal skull, 
and with his face as ruddy as if the 
coloring - matter of the anchovy paste 
were mantling in the patriarchal visage. 
Seeing this, as he exchanged the usual 
salutations, Clennam decided to speak 
to his mother wnthout postponement. 

It had long been customary, as she 
never changed her room, for those who 
had anything to say to her apart to 
wheel her to her desk ; where she sat, 
usually with the back of her chair turned 
towards the rest of the room, and the 
person who talked with her seated in a 
corner, on a stool which was always 
set in that place for that purpose. Ex- 
cept that it was long since the mother 
and son had spoken together without 
the intervention of a third person, it 
was an ordinary matter of course within 
the experience of visitors for Mrs. Clen- 
nam to be asked, with a word of apology 
for the interruption, if she could be 
spoken wfith on a matter of business, 
and, on her replying in the affirmative, to 
be w'heeled into the position described. 

Therefore, when Arthur now made 
such an apology, and such a request, 
and moved her to her desk, and seated 
himself on the stool, Mrs. Finching 
merely began to talk louder and faster, 
as a delicate hint that she could over- 
hear nothing, and Mr. Casby stroked his 
long white locks with sleepy calmness. 

“ Mother, I have heard something 
to-day wdiich I feel persuaded you don’t 
know r , and which I think you should 
know, of the antecedents of that man I 
saw here.” 

“ I know nothing of the antecedents 
of the man you saw here, Arthur.” 

She spoke aloud. He had lowered 
his own voice ; but she rejected that 
advance towards confidence as she re- 
jected every other, and spoke in her 
usual key and in her usual stern voice. 

“ I have received it on no circuitous 
information ; it has come to me direct.’’ 

She asked him, exactly as before, if 
he were there to tell her what it was ? 

“ I thought it right that you should 
know it.” 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


397 


“ And what is it? ” 

“ He has been a prisoner in a French 
jail.” 

She answered with composure, “ I 
should think that very likely.” 

“ But, in a jail for criminals, mother. 
On an accusation of murder.” 

She started at the word, and her looks 
expressed her natural horror. Yet she 
still spoke, aloud, when she de- 
manded, — 

“ Who told you so? ” 

“A man who was his fellow- pris- 
oner.” 

“ That man’s antecedents, I suppose, 
were not known to you, before he told 
you?” 

“ No.” 

“ Though the man himself was ? ” 

“Yes.” 

“ My case, and Flintwinch’s, in re- 
spect of this other man ! I dare say 
the resemblance is not so exact, though, 
as that your informant became known 
to you through a letter from a corre- 
spondent, with whom he had deposited 
money ? How does that part of the par- 
allel stand ? ” 

Arthur had no choice but to say that 
his informant had not become known to 
him through the agency of any such cre- 
dentials, or indeed of any credentials 
at all. Mrs. Clennam’s attentive frown 
expanded by degrees into a severe look 
of triumph, and she retorted with em- 
phasis, “ Take care how you judge oth- 
ers, then. I say to you, Arthur, for 
your good, take care how you judge ! ” 

Her emphasis had been derived from 
her eyes quite as much as from the 
stress she laid upon her words. She 
continued to look at him ; and if, when 
he entered the house, he had had any 
latent hope of prevailing in the least 
with her, she now looked it out of his 
heart. 

“ Mother, shall I do nothing to assist 
you?” 

“ Nothing.” 

“Will you intrust me with no confi- 
dence, no charge, no explanation ? Will 
you take no counsel wfith me? Will 
you not let me come near you?” 

“How can you ask me? You sepa- 
rated yourself from my affairs. It was 
not my act; it was yours. How can 


you consistently ask me such a ques- 
tion? You know that you left me to 
Flintwinch, and that he occupies your 
place.” 

Glancing at Jeremiah, Clennam saw 
in his very gaiters that his attention was 
closely directed to them, though he stood 
leaning against the wall scraping his 
jaw, and pretending to listen to Flora 
as she held forth in a most distracting 
manner on a chaos of subjects, in which 
mackerel, and Mr. F.’s Aunt in a swing, 
had become entangled with cockchafers 
and the wine trade. 

“A prisoner, in a French jail, on 
an accusation of murder,” repeated 
Mrs. Clennam, steadily going over 
what her son had said. “ That is all 
you know of him from the fellow-pris- 
oner ?” 

“In substance, all.” 

“ And was the fellow-prisoner his 
accomplice and a murderer, too ? But, 
of course, he gives a better account of 
himself than of his friend ; it is needless 
to ask. This will supply the rest of 
them here with something new to talk 
about. Casby, Arthur tells me — ” 

“ Stay, mother ! Stay, stay ! ” He 
interrupted her, hastily, for it had not 
entered his imagination that she would 
openly proclaim what he had told her. 

“What now?” she said, with dis- 
pleasure. “What more?” “I beg 
you to excuse me, Mr. Casby, — and 
you, too, Mrs. Finching, — for one 
other moment, with my mother — ” 

He had laid his hand upon her chair, 
or she would otherwise have wheeled it 
round with the touch of her foot upon 
the ground. They were still face to 
face. She looked at him, as he ran over 
the possibilities of some result he had 
not intended, and could not foresee, be- 
ing influenced by Cavalletto’s disclosure 
becoming a matter of notoriety, and 
hurriedly arrived at the conclusion that 
it had best not be talked about ; though 
perhaps he was guided by no more dis- 
tinct reason than that he had taken it 
for granted that his mother would re- 
serve it to herself and her partner. 

“ What now ? ” she said again im- 
patiently. “ What is it ? ” 

“I did not mean, mother, that you 
should repeat what I have communicat- 


39 § 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


ed. I think you had better not repeat 
it.” 

“ Do you make that a condition with 
me?” 

“WeUt Yes.” 

“ Observe, then ! It is you who make 
this a secret,” said she, holding up her 
hand, “and not I. It is you, Arthur, 
who bring here doubts and suspicions 
and entreaties for explanations, and it is 
you, Arthur, who bring secrets here. 
What is it to me, do you think, where 
the man has been, or what he has been ? 
What can it be to me ? The whole 
world may know it, if they care to know 
it ; it is nothing to me. Now, let me 
go.” 

He yielded to her imperious but elated 
look, and turned her chair back to the 
place from which he had wheeled it. 
In doing so he saw elation in the face 
of Mr. Flintwinch, which most assured- 
ly was not inspired by Flora. This 
turning of his intelligence, and of his 
whole attempt and design against him- 
self, did even more than his mother’s 
fixedness and firmness to convince him 
that his efforts with her were idle. 
Nothing remained but the appeal to his 
old friend Affery. 

But even to get to the very doubtful 
and preliminary stage of making the ap- 
peal, seemed one of the least promising 
of human undertakings. She was so 
completely under the thrall of the two 
clever ones, was so systematically kept 
in sight by one or other of them, and 
was so afraid to go about the house be- 
sides, that every opportunity of speak- 
ing to her alone appeared to be fore- 
stalled. Over and above that, Mistress 
Affery, by some means (it was not very 
difficult to guess, through the sharp ar- 
guments of her liege lord), had acquired 
such a lively conviction of the hazard 
of saying anything under any circum- 
stances, that she had remained all this 
time in a corner guarding herself from 
approach with that symbolical instru- 
ment of hers ; so that, when a word or 
two had been addressed to her by Flora, 
or even by the bottle-green patriarch 
himself, she had warded off conversa- 
tion with the toasting-fork, like a dumb 
woman. 

After several abortive attempts to get 


Affery to look at him while she cleared 
the table and washed the tea-service, 
Arthur thought of an expedient which 
Flora might originate. To whom he 
therefore whispered, “ Could you say 
you would like to go through the 
house ? ” 

Now, poor Flora, being always in 
fluctuating expectation of the time when 
Clennam would renew his boyhood, and 
be madly in love with her again, re- 
ceived the whisper with the utmost de- 
light ; not only as rendered precious by 
its mysterious character, but as prepar- 
ing the way for a tender interview in 
which he would declare the state of his 
affections. She immediately began to 
work out the hint. 

“ Ah dear me the poor old room,” said 
Flora, glancing round, “looks just as 
ever Mrs. Clennam I am touched to see 
except for being smokier which was to 
be expected with time and which we 
must all expect and reconcile ourselves 
to being whether we like it or not as I 
am sure I have had to do myself if not 
exactly smokier dreadfully stouter which 
is the same or worse, to think of the 
days when papa used to bring me here 
the least of girls a perfect mass of chil- 
blains to be stuck upon a chair with my 
feet on the rails and stare at Arthur, 
pray excuse me — Mr. Clennam — the 
least of boys in the frightfullest of frills 
and jackets ere yet Mr. F. appeared a 
misty shadow on the horizon paying at- 
tentions like the well-known spectre of 
some place in Germany beginning with 
a B is a moral lesson inculcating that 
all the paths in life are similar to the 
paths down in the North of England 
where they get the coals and make the 
iron and things gravelled with ashes ! ” 

Having paid the tribute of a sigh to 
the instability of human existence, Flo- 
ra hurried on with her purpose. 

“ Not that at any time,” she pro- 
ceeded, “its worst enemy could have 
said it was a cheerful house for that 
it was never made to be but always 
highly impressive, fond memory recalls 
an occasion in youth ere yet the judg- 
ment was mature when Arthur — con- 
firmed habit — Mr. Clennam — took me 
down into an unused kitchen eminent 
for mouldiness and proposed to secrete 


LITTLE DORR IT. 


399 


me there for life and feed me on what 
he could hide from his meals when he 
was not at home for the holidays and 
on dry bread in disgrace which at that 
halcyon period too frequently occurred, 
would it be inconvenient or asking too 
much to beg to be permitted to revive 
those scenes and walk through the 
house? ” 

Mrs. Clennam, who responded with 
a constrained grace to Mrs. Finching’s 
good nature in being there at all, 
though her visit (before Arthur’s unex- 
pected arrival) was undoubtedly an act 
of pure good-nature and no self-gratifi- 
cation, intimated that all the house was 
open to her. Flora rose and looked to 
Arthur for his escort. “Certainly,” 
said he, aloud; “and Affery will light 
us, I dare say.” 

Affery was excusing herself with, 
“ Don’t ask nothing of me, Arthur ! ” 
when Mr. Flintwinch stopped her with, 
“ Why not? Affery, what ’s the matter 
with you, woman ? Why not, jade ! ” 
Thus expostulated with, she came un- 
willingly out of her corner, resigned the 
toasting-fork into one of her husband’s 
hands, and took the candlestick he of- 
fered from the other. 

“ Go before, you fool ! ” said Jere- 
miah. “ Are you going up, or down, 
Mrs. Finching?” 

Flora answered, “Down.” 

“ Then go before, and down, you 
Affery,” said Jeremiah. “ And do it 
properly, or I ’ll come rolling down 
the banisters, and tumbling over 
you ! ” 

Affery headed the exploring party ; 
Jeremiah closed it. He had no inten- 
tion of leaving them. Clennam looking 
back, and seeing him following, three 
stairs behind, in the coolest and most 
methodical manner, exclaimed in a low 
voice, “ Is there no getting rid of him!” 
Flora reassured his mind, by replying 
promptly, “ Why though not exactly 
proper Arthur and a thing I could n’t 
think of before a younger man or a 
stranger still I don’t mind him if you 
so particularly wish it and provided 
you ’ll have the goodness not to take 
me too tight.” 

Wanting the heart to explain that 
this was not at all what he meant, 


Arthur extended his supporting arm 
round Flora’s figure. “O my goodness 
me,” said she, “you are very obedient 
indeed really and it ’s extremely honor- 
able and gentlemanly in you I am sure 
but still at the same time if you would 
like to be a little tighter than that I 
shouldn’t consider it intruding.” 

In this preposterous attitude, un- 
speakably at variance with his anxious 
mind, Clennam descended to the base- 
ment of the house ; finding that wher- 
ever it became darker than elsewhere, 
Flora became heavier, and that when 
the house was lightest she was too. 
Returning from the dismal kitchen- 
regions, which were as dreary as they 
could be, Mistress Affery passed with 
the light into his father’s old room, and 
then into the old dining-room ; always 
passing on before like a phantom that 
was not to be overtaken, and neither 
turning nor answering when he whis- 
pered, “ Affery ! I want to speak to 
you ! ” 

In the dining-room, a sentimental 
desire came over Flora to look into the 
dragon closet which had so often swal- 
lowed Arthur in the days of his boy- 
hood, — not improbably because, as a 
very dark closet, it was a likely place to 
be heavy in. Arthur, fast subsiding in- 
to despair, had opened it, when a knock 
was heard at the outer door. 

Mistress Affery, with a suppressed 
cry, threw her apron over her head. 

“What? You want another dose!” 
said Mr. Flintwinch. “You shall have 
it, my woman, you shall have a good 
one ! O, you shall have a sneezer, 
you shall have a teazer ! ” 

“ In the mean time is anybody going 
to the door ? ” said Arthur. 

“ In the mean time, / am going to the 
door, sir,” returned the old man ; so 
savagely as to render it clear that in 
a choice of difficulties he felt he must 
go, though he would have preferred 
not to go. “ Stay here the while, all ! 
Affery, my woman, move an inch, or 
speak a word in your foolishness, and 
I ’ll treble your dose ! ” 

The moment he was gone, Arthur re- 
leased Mrs. Finching : with some diffi- 
culty, by reason of that lady’s misun- 
derstanding his intentions, and making 


400 


LITTLE D0RR1T. 


her arrangements with a view to tight- 
ening instead of slackening. 

“ Affery, speak to me now ! ” 

“ Don’t touch me, Arthur ! ” she 
cried, shrinking from him. “ Don’t 
come near me. He ’ll see you. Jere- 
miah will. Don’t ! ” 

“ He can’t see me,” returned Arthur; 
suiting the action to the word, “if I 
blow the candle out.” 

“ He ’ll hear you,” cried Affery. 

“ He can’t hear me,” returned Ar- 
thur, suiting the action to the word 
again, “if I draw you into this black 
closet, and speak here. Why do you 
hide your face ? ” 

“ Because I am afraid of seeing some- 
thing.” 

“You can’t be afraid of seeing any- 
thing in this darkness, Affery.” 

“Yes I am. Much more than if it 
was light.” 

“Why are you afraid ? ” 

“ Because the house is full of myste- 
ries and secrets ; because it ’s full of 
whisperings and counsellings ; because 
it’s full of noises. There never was 
such a house for noises. I shall die of 
’em, if Jeremiah don’t strangle me first. 
As I expect he will.” 

“ I have never heard any noises here, 
worth speaking of.” 

“ Ah ! But you would, though, if you 
lived in the house, and was obliged to 
go about it as I am,” said Affery ; “ and 
you ’d feel that they was so well worth 
speaking of, that you ’d feel you was 
nigh bursting, through not being allowed 
to speak of ’em. Here’s Jeremiah! 
You ’ll get me killed.” 

“ My good Affery, I solemnly declare 
to you that I can see the light of the 
open door on the pavement of the hall, 
and so could you if you would uncover 
your face and look.” 

“ I durstn’t do it,” said Affery, “ I 
durstn’t never, Arthur, I ’m always 
blindfolded when Jeremiah ain’t a 
looking, and sometimes even when 
he is.” 

“ He cannot shut the door without 
my seeing him,” said Arthur. “You 
are as safe with me as if he was fifty 
miles away.” 

(“ I wish he was ! ” cried Affery.) 

“ Affery, I want to know what is amiss 


here ; I want some light thrown on the 
secrets of this house.” 

“ I tell you, Arthur,” she interrupted, 
“ noises is the secrets, rustlings and 
stealings about, tremblings, treads over- 
head and treads underneath.” 

“ But those are not all the secrets.” 

“ I don’t know,” said Affery. 
“Don’t ask me no more. Your old 
sweetheart ain’t far off, and she ’s a 
blabber.” 

His old sweetheart, being in fact so 
near at hand that she was then reclin- 
ing against him in a flutter, a very sub- 
stantial angle of forty-five degrees, here 
interposed to assure Mistress Affery, 
with greater earnestness than directness 
of asseveration, that what she heard 
should go no further, but should be 
kept inviolate, “ if on no other account 
on Arthur’s — sensible of intruding in 
being too familiar Doyce and Clen- 
nam’s.” 

“ I make an imploring appeal to you, 
Affery, to you, one of the few agreeable 
early remembrances I have, for my 
mother’s sake, for your husband’s sake, 
for my own, for all our sakes. I am 
sure you can tell me something connect- 
ed with the coming here of this man, if 
you will.” 

“ Why, then I ’ll tell you, Arthur,” 
returned Affery, — Jeremiah’s a com- 
ing ! ” 

“ No, indeed he is not. The door is 
open, and he is standing outside, talk- 
ing.” 

“ I ’ll tell you then,” said Affery, af- 
ter listening, “ that the first time he ev- 
er come he heard the noises his own 
self. ‘ What ’s that ? ’ he said to me. 

‘ I don’t know what it is,’ I says to him, 
catching hold of him, ‘ but I have heard 
it over and over again.’ While I says 
it, he stands a looking at me, all of a 
shake, he do.” 

“ Has he been here often ? ” 

“ Only that night, and the last 
night.” 

“ What did you see of him on the last 
night, after I was gone ? ” 

“ Them two clever ones had him all 
alone to themselves. Jeremiah come a 
dancing at me sideways, after T had let 
you out (he always comes a dancing at 
me sideways when he ’s going to hurt 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


401 


me), and he said to me, ‘ Now, Affery,’ 
he said, ‘ I am a coming behind you, my 
woman, and a going to run you up.’ So 
he took and squeezed the back of my 
neck in his hand, till it made me open 
my mouth, and then he pushed me be- 
fore him to bed, squeezing all the way. 
That ’s what he calls running me up, he 
do. O, he ’s a wicked one ! ” 

“ And did you hear or see no more, 
Affery ? ” 

“ Don’t I tell you I was sent to bed, 
Arthur ! Here he is ! ” 

“ I assure you he is still at the door. 
Those whisperings and counsellings, 
Affery, that you have spoken of. What 
are they ? ” 

“ How should I know ! Don’t ask 
me nothing about ’em, Arthur. Get 
away ! ” 

“ But, my dear Affery ; unless I can 
gain some insight into these hidden 
things, in spite of your husband and in 
spite of my mother, ruin will come of it.” 

“ Don’t ask me nothing,” repeated 
Affery. “ I have been in a dream for 
ever so long. Go away, go away ! ” 

“You said that, before,” returned 
Arthur. “ You used the same expres- 
sion that night, at the door, when I 
asked you what was going on here. 
What do you mean by being in a 
dream ? ” 

“ I ain’t a going to tell you. Get 
away ! I should n’t tell you, if you was 
by yourself ; much less with your old 
sweetheart here.” 

It was equally vain for Arthur to en- 
treat, and for Flora to protest. Affery, 
who had been trembling and struggling 
the whole time, turned a deaf ear to all 
adjuration, and was bent on forcing 
herself out of the closet. 

“ I ’d sooner scream to Jeremiah than 
say another word ! I ’ll call out to him, 
Arthur, if you don’t give over speaking 
to me. Now here ’s the very last word 
I ’ll say afore I call to him. — If ever 
you begin to get the better of them 
two clever ones your own self (you 
ought to it, as I told you when you first 
come home, for you have n’t been a 
living here long years, to be made 
afeard of your life as I have), then do 
you get the better of ’em afore my face ; 
and then do you say to me, Affery, tell 

26 


your dreams ! May be, then I ’ll tell 
’em ! ” 

The shutting of the door stopped Ar- 
thur from replying. They glided into 
the places where Jeremiah had left 
them ; and Clennam, stepping forward 
as that old gentleman returned, informed 
him that he had accidentally extin- 
guished the candle. Mr. Flintwinch 
looked on as he relighted it at the lamp 
in the hall, and preserved a profound 
taciturnity respecting the person who 
had been holding him in conversation. 
Perhaps his irascibility demanded com- 
pensation for some tediousness that the 
visitor had expended on him ; however 
that was, he took such umbrage at see- 
ing his wife with her apron over her 
head, that he charged at her, and, tak- 
ing her veiled nose between his thumb 
and finger, appeared to throw the whole 
screw-power of his person into the wring 
he gave it. 

Flora, now permanently heavy, did 
not release Arthur from the survey of 
the house, until it had extended even 
to his old garret bedchamber. His 
thoughts were otherwise occupied than 
with the tour of inspection ; yet he took 
particular notice at the time, as he 
afterwards had occasion to remember, 
of the airlessness and closeness of the 
house ; that they left the track of their 
footsteps in the dust on the upper 
floors ; and that there was a resistance 
to the opening of one room door, which 
occasioned Affery to cry out that some- 
body was hiding inside, and to contin- 
ue to believe so, though somebody was 
sought and not discovered. When they 
at last returned to his mother’s room, 
they found her, shading her face with 
her muffled hand, and talking in a low 
voice to the Patriarch as he stood be- 
fore the fire. Whose blue eyes, pol- 
ished head, and silken locks, turning 
towards them as they came in, impart- 
ed an inestimable value and inexhausti- 
ble love of his species to his remark, — 

“ So you have been seeing the prem- 
ises, seeing the premises — premises — 
seeing the premises ! ” 

It was not in itself a jewel of benev- 
olence or wisdom, yet he made it an ex- 
emplar of both that one would have 
liked to have a copy of. 


402 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

THE EVENING OF A LONG DAY. 

That illustrious man, and great na- 
tional ornament, Mr. Merdle, continued 
his shining course. It began to be wide- 
ly understood that one who had done so- 
ciety the admirable service of making so 
much money out of it, could not be suf- 
fered to remain a commoner. A baro- 
netcy was spoken of with confidence ; a 
peerage was frequently mentioned. Ru- 
mor had it that Mr. Merdle had set his 
golden face against a baronetcy ; that he 
had plainly intimated to Lord Decimus 
that a baronetcy was not enough for 
him; that he had said, “No: a Peer- 
age, or plain Merdle.” This was re- 
ported to have plunged Lord Decimus 
as nigh to his noble chin in a slough 
of doubts as so lofty a person could be 
sunk. For the Barnacles, as a group 
of themselves in creation, had an idea 
that such distinctions belonged to 
them ; and that when a soldier, sailor, 
or lawyer became ennobled, they let 
him in, as it were, by an act of conde- 
scension, at the family door, and imme- 
diately shut it again. Not only (said 
Rumor) had the troubled Decimus his 
own hereditary part in this impres- 
sion, but he also knew of several Bar- 
nacle claims already on the file, which 
came into collision with that of the 
master spirit. Right or wrong, Rumor 
was very busy,; and Lord Decimus, 
while he was, or was supposed to be, in 
stately excogitation of the difficulty, 
lent her some countenance, by taking, 
on several public occasions, one of 
those elephantine trots of his through 
a jungle of overgrown sentences, wav- 
ing Mr. Merdle about on his trunk as 
Gigantic Enterprise, The Wealth of 
England, Elasticity, Credit, Capital, 
Prosperity, and all manner of bless- 
ings. 

So quietly did the mowing of the old 
scythe go on, that fully three months 
had passed unnoticed since the two Eng- 
lish brothers had been laid in one tomb 
in the strangers’ cemetery at Rome. 
Mr. and Mrs. Sparkler were established 
in their own house, — a little mansion, 
rather of the Tite Barnacle class, quite 


a triumph of inconvenience, with a per- 
petual smell in it of the day before yes- 
terday’s soup and coach-horses, but ex- 
tremely dear, as being exactly in the 
centre of the habitable globe. In this 
enviable abode (and envied it really was 
by many people), Mrs. Sparkler had in- 
tended to proceed at once to the demo- 
lition of the Bosom, when active hostili- 
ties had been suspended by the arrival 
of the Courier with his tidings of death. 
Mrs. Sparkler, who was not unfeeling, 
had received them with a violent burst 
of grief, which had lasted twelve hours ; 
after which she had arisen to see about 
her mourning, and to take every precau- 
tion that could insure its being as be- 
coming as Mrs. Merdle’s. A gloom 
was then cast over more than one dis- 
tinguished family (according to the po- 
litest sources of intelligence), and the 
Courier went back again. 

Mr. and Mrs. Sparkler had been din- 
ing alone, with their gloom cast over 
them, and Mrs. Sparkler reclined on a 
drawing-room sofa. It was a hot summer 
Sunday evening. The residence in the 
centre of the habitable globe, at all times 
stuffed and close as if it had an incurable 
cold in its head, was that evening partic- 
ularly stifling. The bells of the church- 
es had done their w'orst in the way of 
clanging among the unmelodious echoes 
of the streets, and the lighted windows 
of the churches had ceased to be yellow 
in the gray dusk, and had died out 
opaque black. Mrs. Sparkler, lying 
on her sofa looking through an open 
window at the opposite side of a nar- 
row street, over boxes of mignonette 
and flowers, was tired of the view. 
Mrs. Sparkler, looking at another win- 
dow where her husband stood in the 
balcony, was tired of that view. Mrs. 
Sparkler, looking at herself in her 
mourning, was even tired of that view: 
though, naturally, not so tired of that as 
of the other two. 

“ It ’s like lying in a well,” said Mrs. 
Sparkler, changing her position fretful- 
ly. “Dear me, Edmund, if you have 
anything to say, why don’t you say it ? ” 

Mr. Sparkler might have replied with 
ingenuousness, “ My life, I have noth- 
| ing to say.” But, as the repartee did 
1 not occur to him, he contented him- 


LITTLE DORR IT. 


403 


self with coming in from the balcony 
and standing at the side of his wife’s 
couch. 

“Good gracious, Edmund!” said 
Mrs. Sparkler, more fretfully still, 
“you are absolutely putting migno- 
nette up your nose ! Pray don’t ! ” 

Mr. Sparkler, in absence of mind, — 
perhaps in a more literal absence of 
mind than is usually understood by the 
phrase, — had smelt so hard at a sprig 
in his hand as to be on the verge of the 
offence in question. He smiled, said, 
“I ask your pardon, my dear,” and 
threw it out of window. 

“ You make my head ache by remain- 
ing in that position, Edmund,” said 
Mrs. Sparkler, raising her eyes to him, 
after another minute; “you look so 
aggravatingly large by this light. Do 
sit down.” 

“ Certainly, my dear,” said Mr. 
Sparkler. And took a chair on the 
same spot. 

“ If I didn’t know that the longest 
day was past,” said Fanny, yawning in 
a dreary manner, “ I should have felt 
certain this was the longest day. I 
never did experience such a day.” 

“ Is this your fan, my love ? ” asked 
Mr. Sparkler, picking up one, and pre- 
senting it. 

“ Edmund,” returned his wife, more 
wearily yet, “don’t ask weak questions, 

I entreat you not. Whose can it be 
but mine ? ” 

“Yes, I thought it was yours,” said 
Mr. Sparkler. 

“ Then you should n’t ask,” retorted 
Fanny. After a little while, she turned 
on her sofa and exclaimed, “ Dear me, 
— dear me, there never was such a long 
day as this ! ” After another little 
while, she got up slowly, walked about, 
and came back again. 

“My dear,” said Mr. Sparkler, flash- 
ing with an original conception, “ I think 
you must have got the fidgets.” 

“Oh ! Fidgets!” repeated Mrs. Spark- 
ler. “ Don’t ! ” 

“My adorable girl,” urged Mr. 
Sparkler, “ try your aromatic vinegar. 

I have often seen my mother try it, and 
it seemingly refreshed her. And she 
is, as I believe you are aware, a remark- 
ably fine woman, with no non — ” 


“ Good Gracious ! ” exclaimed Fan- 
ny, starting up again, “ it ’s beyond all 
patience ! This is the most wearisome 
day that ever did dawn upon the world, 
I am certain ! ” 

Mr. Sparkler looked meekly after her 
as she lounged about the room, and he 
appeared to be a little frightened. 
When she had tossed a few trifles 
about, and had looked down into the 
darkening street out of all the three 
windows, she returned to her sofa, and 
threw herself among its pillows. 

“ Now, Edmund, come here ! Come 
a little nearer, because I want to be 
able to touch you with my fan, that I 
may impress you very much with what 
I am going to say. That will do. 
Quite close enough. O, you do look 
so big ! ” 

Mr. Sparkler apologized for the cir- 
cumstance, pleaded that he could n’t 
help it, and said that “ our fellows,” 
without more particularly indicating 
whose fellows, used to call him by the 
name of Quinbus Flestrin, Junior, or 
the Young Man Mountain. 

“ You ought to have told me so be- 
fore,” Fanny complained. 

“ My dear,” returned Mr. Sparkler, 
rather gratified, “ I did n’t know it 
would interest you, or I would have 
made a point of telling you.” 

“There ! For goodness’ sake, don’t 
talk,” said Fanny ; “ I want to talk 
myself. Edmund, we must not be alone 
any more. I must take such precau- 
tions as will prevent my being ever 
again reduced to the state of dreadful 
depression in which I am this even- 
ing.” 

“ My dear,” answered Mr. Sparkler; 
“ being as you are well known to be, a 
remarkably fine woman, with no — ” 

“ O, good gracious ! ” cried Fanny. 

Mr. Sparkler was so discomposed by 
the energy of this exclamation, accom- 
panied with a flouncing up from the 
sofa and a flouncing down again, that a 
minute or two elapsed before he felt 
himself equal to saying, in explana- 
tion, — 

“ I mean, my dear, that everybody 
knows you are calculated to shine in 
society.” 

“Calculated to shine in society,” re- 


4°4 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


torted Fanny, with great irritability : 
“ yes indeed ! And then what hap- 
pens ? I no sooner recover, in a visit- 
ing point of view, the shock of poor 
dear papa’s death, and my poor uncle’s 

— though I do not disguise from my- 
self that the last was a happy release, 
for, if you are not presentable, you had 
much better die — ” 

“ You are not referring to me, my 
love, I hope?” Mr. Sparkler humbly 
interrupted. 

“ Edmund, Edmund, you would wear 
out a Saint. Am I not expressly speak- 
ing of my poor uncle ? ” 

“ You looked with so much expression 
at myself, my dear girl,” said Mr. 
Sparkler, “ that I felt a little uncomfort- 
able. Thank ybu, my love.” 

“ Now you have put me out,” ob- 
served Fanny with a resigned toss of 
her fan, “ and I had better go to 
bed.” 

“ Don’t do that, my love,” urged 
Mr. Sparkler. “Take time.” 

Fanny took a good deal of time; 
lying back with her eyes shut, and her 
eyebrows raised with a hopeless expres- 
sion, as if she had utterly given up all 
terrestrial affairs. At length, without 
the slightest notice, she opened her 
eyes again, and recommenced in a short, 
sharp manner. 

“ What happens then, I ask? What 
happens? Why, I find myself at the 
very period when I might shine most in 
society, and should most like for very 
momentous reasons to shine in society, 

— I find myself in a situation which to a 
certain extent disqualifies me for going 
into society. It ’s too bad really ! ” 

“ My dear,” said Mr. Sparkler, “ I 
don’t think it need keep you at home.” 

“ Edmund, you ridiculous creature,” 
returned P’anny, with great indignation ; 
“ do you suppose that a woman in the 
bloom of youth, and not wholly devoid 
of personal attraction's, can put herself, 
at such a time, in competition as to fig- 
ure with a woman in every other way 
her inferior? If you do suppose such a 
thing, your folly is boundless.” 

Mr. Sparkler submitted that he had 
thought “ it might be got over.” 

“Got over!” repeated Fanny, with 
immeasurable scorn. 


“Fora time,” Mr. Sparkler submit- 
ted. 

Honoring the last feeble suggestion 
with no notice, Mrs. Sparkler declared 
with bitterness that it really was too bad, 
and that positively it was enough to make 
one wish one was dead ! 

“ However,” she said, when she had 
in some measure recovered from her 
sense of personal ill-usage; “provok- 
ing as it is, and cruel as it seems, I sup- 
pose it must be submitted to.” 

“ Especially as it was to be expect- 
ed,” said Mr. Sparkler. 

“Edmund,” returned his wife, “if 
you have nothing more becoming to do 
than to attempt to insult the woman who 
has honored you with her hand, w hen 
she finds herself in adversity, I think 
you had better go to bed!” 

Mr. Sparkler was much afflicted by 
the charge, and offered a most tender 
and earnest apology. His apology was 
accepted ; but Mrs. Sparkler requested 
him to go round to the other side of the 
sofa and sit in the v'indow-curtain, to 
tone himself dowm. 

“ Now', Edmund,” she said, stretch- 
ing out her fan, and touching him with 
it at arm’s length, “ what I was going 
to say to you, w'hen you began as usual 
to prose and worry, is, that I shall guard 
against our being alone any more, and 
that, when circumstances prevent my 
going out to my own satisfaction, I 
must arrange to have some people or 
other always here ; for I really can- 
not, and wall not, have another such 
day as this has been. 

Mr. Sparkler’s sentiments as to the 
plan were, in brief, that it had no non- 
sense about it. He added, “ And be- 
sides, you know' it ’s likely that you ’ll 
soon have your sister — ” 

“Dearest Amy, yes?” cried Mrs. 
Sparkler, w'ith a sigh of affection. 

“ Darling little thing ! Not, however, 
that Amy would do here alone.” 

Mr. Sparkler was going to say, “No?” 
interrogatively. But he saw his danger, 
and said it assentingly. “ No. O dear 
no ; she would d’t do here alone.” 

“No, Edmund. For not only are 
the virtues of the precious child of that 
still character that they require a con- 
trast, — require life and movement 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


405 


around them to bring them out in their 
right colors and make one love them of 
all things ; but she will require to be 
roused, on more accounts than one.” 

“That’s it,” said Mr. Sparkler. 
“ Roused.” 

“ Pray don’t, Edmund ! Your habit 
of interrupting without having the least 
thing in the world to say distracts one. 
You must be broken of it. Speaking of 
Amy, — my poor little pet was devoted- 
ly attached to poor papa, and no doubt 
will have lamented his loss exceedingly, 
and grieved very much. I have done 
so myself. I have felt it dreadfully. 
But Amy will no doubt have felt it 
even more, from having been on the spot 
the whole time, and having been with 
poor dear papa at the last ; which I un- 
happily was not.” 

Here Fanny stopped to weep, and to 
say, “ Dear, dear, beloved papa ! How 
truly gentlemanly he was ! What a 
contrast to poor uncle ! ” 

“ From the effects of that trying time,” 
she pursued, “my good little Mouse 
will have to be roused. Also, from the 
effects of this long attendance upon 
Edward in his illness, — an attendance 
which is not yet over, which may even 
go on for some time longer, and which 
in the mean while unsettles us all, by 
keeping poor dear papa’s affairs from 
being wound up. Fortunately, howev- 
er, the papers with his agents here be- 
ing all sealed up and locked up, as he 
left them when he providentially came 
to England, the affairs are in that state 
of order that they can wait until my 
brother Edward recovers his health 
in Sicily sufficiently to come over 
and administer, or execute, or what- 
ever it' may be that will have to be 
done.” 

“He couldn’t have a better nurse to 
bring him round,” Mr. Sparkler made 
bold to opine. 

“For a wonder, I can agree with 
you,” returned his wife, languidly turn- 
ing her eyelids a little in his direction 
(she held forth, in general, as if to the 
drawing-room furniture), “ and can 
adopt your words. He couldn’t have 
a better nurse to bring him round. 
There are times when my dear child 
is a little wearing to an active mind; 


but, as a nurse, she is Perfection. 
Best of Amys ! ” 

Mr. Sparkler, growing rash on his 
late success, observed that Edward had 
had, biggodd, a long bout of it, my dear 
girl. 

“If Bout, Edmund,” returned Mrs. 
Sparkler, “is the slang term for indis- 
position, he has. If it is not, I am un- 
able to give an opinion on the barba- 
rous language you address to Edward’s 
sister. That he contracted Malaria 
Fever somewhere — either by travelling 
day and night to Rome, where, after 
all, he arrived too late to see poor dear 
papa before his death, or under some 
other unwholesome circumstances — is 
indubitable, if that is what you mean. 
Likewise, that his extremely careless 
life has made him a very bad subject 
for it indeed.” 

Mr. Sparkler considered it a parallel 
case to that of some of our fellows in 
the West . Indies with Yellow Jack. 
Mrs. Sparkler closed her eyes again, 
and refused to have any consciousness 
of our fellows, of the West Indies, or of 
Yellow Jack. 

“ So Amy,” she pursued when she 
reopened her ej'elids, “will require to 
be roused from the effects of many te- 
dious and anxious weeks. And lastly, 
she will require to be roused from a low 
tendency which I know very well to be 
at the bottom of her heart. Don’t ask 
me what it is, Edmund, because I must 
decline to tell you.” 

“ I am not going to, my dear,” said 
Mr. Sparkler. 

“ I shall thus have much improve- 
ment to effect in my sweet child,” Mrs. 
Sparkler continued, “and cannot have 
her near me too soon. Amiable and 
dear little Two-shoes ! As to the settle- 
ment of poor papa’s affairs, my interest 
in that is not very selfish. Papa be- 
haved very generously to me when I 
was married, and I have little or noth- 
ing to expect. Provided he has made 
no will that can come into force, leaving 
a legacy to Mrs. General, I am con- 
tented. Dear ^apa, dear papa ! ” 

She wept again, but Mrs. General was 
the best of restoratives. The name 
soon stimulated her to dry her eyes and 
say,— 


406 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


“ It is a highly encouraging circum- 
stance in Edward’s illness, I am thank- 
ful to think, and gives one the greatest 
confidence in his sense not being im- . 
paired, or his proper spirit weakened, — 
down to the time of poor dear papa’s 
death at all events, — that he paid off 
Mrs. General instantly, and sent her 
out of the house. I applaud him for it. 

I could forgive him a great deal, for 
doing, with such promptitude, so exactly 
what I would have done myself ! ” 

Mrs. Sparkler was in the full glow of 
her gratification, when a double knock 
was heard at the door. A very odd 
knock. Low, as if to avoid making a 
noise and attracting attention. Long, 
as if the person knocking were preoc- 
cupied in mind, and forgot to leave off. 

“ Halloa ! ” said Mr. Sparkler. 
“Who’s this!” 

“ Not Amy and Edward, without no- 
tice and without a carriage ! ” said Mrs. 
Sparkler. “ Look out.” 

The room was dark, but the street 
was lighter, because of its lamps. Mr. 
Sparkler’s head peeping over the bal- 
cony looked so very bulky and heavy, 
that it seemed on the point of overbal- 
ancing him and flattening the unknown 
below. 

“ It ’s one fellow,” said Mr. Sparkler. 

“ I can’t see who — stop, though ! ” 

On this second thought he went out 
into the balcony again and had another 
look. He came back as the door was 
opened, and announced that he believed 
he had identified “his governor’s tile.” 
He was not mistaken, for his governor, 
with his tile in his hand, w r as introduced 
immediately afterwards. 

“ Candles ! ” said Mrs. Sparkler, with 
a word of excuse for the darkness. 

“ It ’s light enough for me,” said Mr. 
Merdle. 

When the candles were brought in, 
Mr. Merdle was discovered standing 
behind the door, picking his lips. “ I 
thought I ’d give you a call,” he said. 

“ I am rather particularly occupied just 
now ; and, as I happened to be out for 
a stroll, I thought I ’d give you a call.” 

As he was in dinner dress, Fanny 
asked him where he had been din- 
ing ? 

“Well,”, said Mr. Merdle, “I have 


n’t been dining anywhere, particu- 
larly.” 

“Of course you have dined?” said 
Fanny. 

“ Why — no I haven’t exactly dined,” 
said Mr. Merdle. 

He had passed his hand over his 
yellow forehead, and considered, as if he 
were not sure about it. Something to 
eat was proposed. “ No, thank you,” 
said Mr. Merdle, “ I don’t feel inclined 
for it. I was to have dined out along 
with Mrs. Merdle. But as I didn’t feel 
inclined for dinner, I let Mrs. Merdle go 
by herself just as we were getting into 
the carriage, and thought I ’d take a 
stroll instead.” 

Would he have tea, or coffee ? “No, 
thank you,” said Mr. Merdle. “ I 
looked in at the Club, and got a bottle 
of wine.” 

At this period of his visit, Mr. Mer- 
dle took the chair which Edmund 
Sparkler had offered him, and which he 
had hitherto been pushing slowly about 
before him, like a dull man with a pair 
of skates on for the first time, w'ho could 
not make up his mind to start. He 
now put his hat upon another chair 
beside him, and, looking down into it as 
if it were some twenty feet deep, said 
again: “You see I thought I’d give 
you a call.” 

“ Flattering to us,” said Fanny, “for 
you are not a calling man.” 

“ N — no,” returned Mr. Merdle, 
who was by this time taking himself 
into custody under both coat-sleeves, — 
“ no, I am not a calling man.” 

“ You have too much to do for that,” 
said Fanny. “ Having so much to do, 
Mr. Merdle, loss of appetite is a seri- 
ous thing with you, and you must have 
it seen to. You must not be ill.” 

“ O, I am very well,” replied Mr. 
Merdle, after deliberating about it. “ I 
am as well as I usually am. I am well 
enough. I am as well as I want to 
be.” 

The master-mind of the age, true to 
its characteristic of being at all times a 
mind that had as little as possible to 
say for itself and great difficulty in say- 
ing it, became mute again. Mrs. Spark- 
ler began to wonder how long the 
master-mind meant to stay. 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


407 


“ I was speaking of poor papa when 
you came in, sir.” 

“Ay? Quite a coincidence,” said 
Mr. Merdle. 

Fanny did not see that ; but felt it 
incumbent on her to continue talking. 
“I was saying,” she pursued, “that 
my brother’s illness has occasioned a 
delay in examining and arranging papa’s 
property.” 

“Yes,” said Mr. Merdle, — “ yes. 
There has been a delay.” 

“ Not that it is of consequence,” said 
F anny. 

“ Not,” assented Mr. Merdle, after 
having examined the cornice of all that 
part of the room which was within his 
range, — “not that it is of any conse- 
quence.” 

“ My only anxiety is,” said Fanny, 
“that Mrs. General should not get 
anything.” 

“She won’t get anything,” said Mr. 
M erdle. 

Fanny was delighted to hear him ex- 
press the opinion. Mr. Merdle, after 
taking another gaze into the depths of 
his hat, as if he thought he saw some- 
thing at the bottom, rubbed his hair 
and slowly appended to his last remark 
the confirmatory words. “ O dear no. 
No. Not she. Not likely.” 

As the topic seemed exhausted, and 
Mr. Merdle too, Fanny inquired if he 
were going to take up Mrs. Merdle and 
the carriage, in his way home ? 

“ No,” he answered ; “ I shall go by 
the shortest way, and leave Mrs. Mer- 
dle to — ” here he looked all over the 
palms of both his hands as if he were 
telling his own fortune — “to take care 
of herself. I dare say she ’ll manage 
to do it.” 

“ Probably,” said Fanny. 

There was then a long silence ; dur- 
ing which, Mrs. Sparkler, lying back 
on her sofa again, shut her eyes and 
raised her eyebrows in her former re- 
tirement from mundane affairs. 

“But, however,” said Mr. Merdle, 
“ I am equally detaining you and my- 
self. I thought I ’d give you a call, you 
know.” 

“ Charmed, I am sure,” said Fan- 
ny. 

“So I am off,” added Mr. Merdle, 


getting up. “ Could you lend me a 
penknife ? ” 

It was an odd thing, Fanny smilingly 
observed, for her, who could seldom 
prevail upon herself even to write a 
letter, to lend to a man of such vast 
business as Mr. Merdle. “Is n’t it?” 
Mr. Merdle acquiesced; “but I want 
one ; and I know you have got several 
little wedding keepsakes about, with 
scissors and tweezers and such things 
in them. You shall have it back to- 
morrow.” 

“ Edmund,” said Mrs. Sparkler, 
“open (now, very carefully I beg and 
beseech, for you are so very awkward) 
the mother-of-pearl box on my little 
table there, and give Mr. Merdle the 
mother-of-pearl penknife.” 

“Thank you,” said Mr. Merdle; 
“ but if you have got one with a darker 
handle, I think I should prefer one 
with a darker handle.” 

“Tortoise-shell?” 

“Thank you,” said Mr. Merdle; “yes. 
I think I should prefer tortoise-shell.” 

Edmund accordingly received in- 
structions to open the tortoise - shell 
box, and give Mr. Merdle the tortoise- 
shell knife. On his doing so, his wife 
said to the master-spirit graciously, — 

“ I will forgive you, if you ink it.” 

“ I ’ll undertake not to ink it,” said 
Mr. Merdle. 

The illustrious visitor then put out 
his coat-cuff, and for a moment en- 
tombed Mrs. Sparkler’s hand, — wrist, 
bracelet, and all. Where his own hand 
shrunk to was not made manifest, but 
it was as remote from Mrs. Sparkler’s 
sense of touch as if he had been a 
highly meritorious Chelsea Veteran or 
Greenwich Pensioner. 

Thoroughly convinced, as he went 
out of the room, that it was the longest 
day that ever did come to an end at 
last, and that there never was a woman 
not wholly devoid of personal attrac- 
tions, so worn out by idiotic and lump- 
ish people, Fanny passed into the bal- 
cony for a breath of air. Waters of 
vexation filled her eyes , and they had 
the effect of making the famous Mr. 
Merdle, in going down the street, ap- 
pear to leap, and waltz, and gyrate, as 
if he were possessed by several Devils. 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


408 

CHAPTER XXV. 

THE CHIEF BUTLER RESIGNS THE SEALS 
OF OFFICE. 

The dinner-party was at the great 
Physician’s. Bar was there, and in 
full force. Ferdinand Barnacle was 
there, and in his most engaging state. 
Few ways of life were hidden from 
Physician, and he was oftener in its 
darkest places than even Bishop. 
There were brilliant ladies about Lon- 
don who perfectly doted on him, my 
dear, as the most charming creature and 
the most delightful person, who would 
have been shocked to find themselves so 
close to him if they could have known 
on what sights those thoughtful eyes of 
his had rested within an hour or two, 
and near to whose beds, and under 
what roofs, his composed figure had 
stood. But Physician was a composed 
man, who performed neither on his own 
trumpet, nor on the trumpets of other 
people. Many wonderful things did 
he see and hear, and much irreconcil- 
able moral contradiction did he pass his 
life among ; yet his equality of com- 
passion was no more disturbed than 
the Divine Master’s of all healing was. 
He went, like the rain, among the 
just and unjust, doing all the good he 
could, and neither proclaiming it in 
the synagogues nor at the corners of 
streets. 

As no man of large experience of 
humanity, however quietly carried it 
may be, can fail to be invested with an 
interest peculiar to the possession of 
such knowledge, Physician was an at- 
tractive man. Even the daintier gen- 
tlemen and ladies, who had no idea of 
his secret, and who would have been 
startled out of more wits than they had, 
by the monstrous impropriety of his 
proposing to them, “ Come and see 
what I see ! ” confessed his attraction. 
Where he was, something real was. 
And half a grain of reality, like the 
smallest portion of some other scarce 
natural productions, will flavor an enor- 
mous quantity of diluent. 

' It came to pass., therefore, that Phy- 
sician’s little dinners always presented 
people in their least conventional lights. 


The guests said to themselves, whether 
they were conscious of it or no, “ Here 
is a man who really has an acquaintance 
with us as we are, who is admitted to 
some of us every day with our wigs and 
paint off, who hears the wanderings of 
our minds, and sees the undisguised 
expression of our faces, when both are 
past our control ; we may as well make 
an approach to reality with him, for the 
man has got the better of us and is too 
strong for us.” Therefore Physician’s 
guests came out so surprisingly at his 
round table that they were almost natu- 
ral. 

Bar’s knowledge of that agglomera- 
tion of jurymen which is called human- 
ity was as sharp as a razor, yet a razor 
is not a generally convenient instru- 
ment, and Physician’s plain bright scal- 
pel, though far less keen, was adaptable 
to far wider purposes. Bar knew all 
about the gullibility and knavery of 
people ; but Plwsician could have given 
him a better insight into their tender- 
nesses and affections, in one week of 
his rounds, than Westminster Hail and 
all the circuits put together, in three- 
score years and ten. Bar always had a 
suspicion of this, and perhaps was glad 
to encourage it (for if the world were 
really a great Law Court one would 
think that the last day of Term could 
not too soon arrive); and so he liked 
and respected Physician quite as much 
as any other kind of man did. 

Mr. Merdle’s default left a Banquo’s 
chair at the table ; but if he had been 
there, he would have merely made the 
difference of Banquo in it, and conse- 
quently he was no loss. - Bar, who 
picked up all sorts of odds and ends 
about Westminster Hall, much as a 
raven would have done if he had passed 
as much of his time there, had been 
picking up a great many straws lately, 
and tossing them about to try which 
way the Merdle wind blew. He now 
had a little talk on the subject with 
Mrs. Merdle herself ; sliding up to that 
lady, of course, with his double eye- 
glass and his Jury droop. 

“ A certain bird,” said Bar, and he 
looked as if it could have been no other 
bird than a magpie, “ has been whis- 
pering among us lawyers lately, that 


LITTLE DORR IT. 


409 


there is to be an addition to the titled 
personages of this realm.” 

“ Really? ” said Mrs. Merdle. 

“Yes,” said Bar. “Has not the 
bird been whispering in very different 
ears from ours, — in lovely ears ? ” He 
looked expressively at Mrs. Merdle’s 
nearest ear-ring. 

“Do you mean mine?” asked Mrs. 
Merdle. 

“ When I say lovely,” said Bar, “ I 
always mean you.” 

“ You never mean anything, I think,” 
returned Mrs. Merdle (not displeased). 

“ O, cruelly unjust ! ” said Bar. 
“ But the bird.” 

“ I am the last person in the world 
to hear news,” observed Mrs. Merdle, 
carelessly arranging her stronghold. 
“Who is it?” 

“ What an admirable witness you 
would make ! ” said Bar. “No jury 
(unless we could impanel one of blind 
men) could resist you, if you were ever 
so bad a one ; but you would be such 
a good one ! ” 

“ Why, you ridiculous man ? ” asked 
Mrs. Merdle, laughing. 

Bar waved his double eye-glass three 
or four times between himself and the 
Bosom, as a rallying answer, and in- 
quired in his most insinuating ac- 
cents, — 

“ What am I to call the most elegant, 
accomplished, and charming of women, 
a few weeks, or it may be a few days, 
hence ? ” 

“Didn’t your bird tell you what to 
call her?” answered Mrs. Merdle. 
“ Do ask it to-morrow, and tell me, the 
next time you see me, what it says ! ” 

This led to further passages of similar 
pleasantry between the two ; but Bar, 
with all his sharpness, got nothing out 
of them. Physician, on the other hand, 
taking Mrs. Merdle down to her car- 
riage and attending on her as she put 
on her cloak, inquired into the symp- 
toms with his usual calm directness. 

“ May I ask,” he said, “is this true 
about Merdle ? ” 

“ My dear doctor,” she returned, 
“ you ask me the very question that I 
was half disposed to ask you.” 

“To ask me 1 Why me?” 

“ Upon my honor, I think Mr. Mer- 


dle reposes greater confidence in you 
than in any one.” 

“ On the contrary, he tells me abso- 
lutely nothing, even professionally. You 
have heard the talk, of course ? ” 

“ Of course I have. But you know 
what Mr. Merdle is ; you know how 
taciturn and reserved he is. I assure 
you I have no idea what foundation for 
it there may be. I should like it to be 
true ; why should I deny that to you ! 
You would know better, if I did ! ” 

“ Just so,” said Physician. 

“ But whether it is all true, or partly 
true, or entirely false, I am wholly un- 
able to say. It is a most provoking 
situation, a most absurd situation ; but 
you know Mr. Merdle, and are not 
surprised.” 

Physician was not surprised, handed 
her into her carriage, and bade her 
good night. He stood for a moment 
at his own hall door, looking sedately 
at the elegant equipage as it rattled 
away. On his return up stairs, the 
rest of the guests soon dispersed, and 
he was left alone. Being a great reader 
of all kinds of literature (and never at 
all apologetic for that weakness), he 
sat down comfortably to read. 

The clock upon his study-table point- 
ed to a few minutes short of twelve, 
when his attention was called to it by a 
ringing at the door-bell. A man of 
plain habits, he had sent his servants 
to bed and must needs go down to open 
the door. He went down, and there 
found a man without hat or coat, whose 
shirt-sleeves were rolled up tight to 
his shoulders. For a moment, he 
thought the man had been fighting ; 
the rather, as he was much agitated 
and out of breath. A second look, 
however, showed him that the man was 
particularly cle&n, and not otherwise 
discomposed as to his dress than as it 
answered this description. 

“ I come from the warm-baths, sir, 
round in the neighboring street.” 

“And what is the matter at the 
warm-baths?” 

“ Would you please to come directly, 
sir. V/e found that, lying on the ta- 
ble.” 

He put into the Physician’s hand a 
scrap of paper. Physician looked at 


4io 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


it, and read his own name and address 
written in pencil ; nothing more. He 
looked closer at the writing, looked at 
the man, took his hat from its peg, put 
the key of his door in his pocket, and 
they hurried away together. 

When they came to the warm-baths, 
all the other people belonging to that 
establishment were looking out for them 
at the door, and running up and down 
the passages. “ Request everybody 
else to keep back, if you please,” said 
the physician aloud to the master; 
“ and do you take me straight to the 
place, my friend,” to the messenger. 

The messenger hurried before him, 
along a grove of little rooms, and, turn- 
ing into one at the end of the grove, 
looked round the door. Physician was 
close upon him, and looked round the 
door too. 

There was a bath in that corner, from 
which the water had been hastily 
drained off. Lying in it, as in a grave 
or sarcophagus, with a hurried drapery 
of sheet and blanket thrown across it, 
was the body of a heavily made man, 
with an obtuse head, and coarse, mean, 
common features. A skylight had 
been opened to release the steam with 
which the room had been filled ; but it 
hung, condensed into water-drops, heav- 
ily upon the walls, and heavily upon 
the face and figure in the bath. The 
room was still hot, and the marble 
of the bath still warm ; but the face 
and figure were clammy to the. touch. 
The white marble at the bottom of the 
bath was veined with a dreadful red. 
On the ledge at the side were an empty 
laudanum-bottle and a tortoise-shell 
handled penknife, — soiled, but not 
with ink. 

“ Separation of jugular vein — death 
rapid — been dead at least half an 
hour.” This echo of the physician’s 
words ran through the passages and 
little rooms, and through the house, 
while he was yet straightening himself 
from having bent down to reach to the 
bottom of thagjbath, and while he was 
yet dabbling his hands in water ; redly 
veining it, as the marble was veined, 
before it mingled into one tint. 

He turned his eyes to the dress upon 
the sofa, and to the watch, money, and 


pocket-book, on the table. A folded 
note half buckled up in the pocket-book, 
and half protruding from it, caught his 
observant glance. He looked at it, 
touched it, pulled it a little further out 
from among the leaves, said quietly, 
“This is addressed to me,” and opened 
and read it. 

There were no ‘directions for him to 
give. The people of the house knew 
what to do ; the proper authorities were 
soon brought ; and they took an equa- 
ble business-like possession of the de- 
ceased and of what had been his prop- 
erty, with no greater disturbance of 
manner or countenance than usually 
attends the winding-up of a clock. 
Physician was glad to walk out into 
the night air, — was even glad, in spite 
of his great experience, to sit down 
upon a doorstep for a little while ; feel- 
ing sick and faint. 

Bar was a near neighbor of his, and, 
when he came to the house, he saw a 
light in the room where he knew his 
friend often sat late, getting up his 
work. As the light was never there 
when Bar was not, it gave . him assur- 
ance that Bar was not yet in bed. In 
fact, this busy bee had a verdict to 
get to-morrow, against evidence, and 
was improving the shining hours in 
setting snares for the gentlemen of the 
jury. 

Physician’s knock astonished Bar ; 
but as he immediately suspected that 
somebody had come to tell him that 
somebody else was robbing him, or 
otherwise trying to get the better of 
him, he came down promptly and softly. 
He had been clearing his head with a 
lotion of cold water, as a good prepara- 
tive to providing hot water for the 
heads of the jury, and had been reading 
with the neck of his shirt thrown wide 
open, that he might the more freely 
choke the opposite witnesses. In con- 
sequence, he came down looking rather 
wild. Seeing Physician, the least ex- 
pected of men, he looked wilder and 
said, “ What ’s the matter ? ” 

“You asked me once what Merdle’s 
complaint was.” 

“ Extraordinary answer ! I know I 
did.” 

“ I told you I had not found it out.” 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


“ Yes. I know you did.” 

“ I have found it out.” 

“ My God ! ” said Bar, starting back, 
and clapping his hand upon the other’s 
breast. “ And so have I ! I see it in 
your face.” 

They went into the nearest room, 
where Physician gave him the letter to 
read. He read it through half a dozen 
times. There was not much in it as to 
quantity ; but it made a great demand 
on his close and continuous attention. 
He could not sufficiently give utterance 
to his regret that he had not himself 
found a clew to this. The smallest clew, 
he said, would have made him master 
of the case, and what a case it would 
have been to have got to the bottom 
of. 

Physician had engaged to break the 
intelligence in Harley Street. Bar 
could not at once return to his inveigle- 
ments of the most enlightened and re- 
markable jury he had ever seen in that 
box, with whom, he could tell his 
learned friend, no shallow sophistry 
would go down, and no unhappily abused 
professional tact and skill prevail (this 
was the way he meant to begin with 
them) ; so he said he would go too, and 
would loiter to and fro near the house 
while his friend was inside. They 
walked there, the better to recover self- 
possession in the air ; and the wings of 
day were fluttering the night when Phy- 
sician knocked at the door. 

A footman of rainbow hues, in the 
public eye, was sitting up for his master, 
— that is to say, was fast asleep in the 
kitchen, over a couple of candles and a 
newspaper, demonstrating the great ac- 
cumulation of mathematical odds against 
the probabilities of a house being set 
on fire by accident. When this serving- 
man was roused, Physician had still to 
await the rousing of the Chief Butler. 
At last that noble creature came into 
the dining-room in a flannel gown and 
list shoes ; but with his cravat on, and 
a Chief Butler all over. It was morn- 
ing now. Physician had opened the 
shutters of one window while waiting, 
that he might see the light. 

“ Mrs. Merdle’s maid must be called, 
and told to get Mrs. Merdle up, and 
prepare her, as gently as she can, to see 


411 

me. I have dreadful news to break to 
her.” 

Thus Physician to the Chief Butler. 
The latter, who had a candle in his 
hand, called his man to take it away. 
Then he approached the window with 
dignity ; looking on at Physician’s news 
exactly as he had looked on at the din- 
ners in that very room. 

“ Mr. Merdle is dead.” 

“ I should wish,” said the Chief But- 
ler, “ to give a month’s notice.” 

“Mr. Merdle has destroyed himself.” 

“Sir,” said the Chief Butler, “that 
is very unpleasant to the feelings of one 
in my position, as calculated to awaken 
prejudice ; and I should wish to leave 
immediate.” 

“ If you are not shocked, are you not 
suiprised, man?” demanded the Phy- 
sician, warmly. 

The Chief Butler, erect and calm, re- 
plied in these memorable words : “ Sir, 
Mr. Merdle never was the gentleman, 
and no ungentlemanly act on Mr. Mer- 
dle’s part would surprise me. Is there 
anybody else I can send to you, or any 
other directions I can give before I 
leave, respecting what you would wish 
to be done ? ” 

When Physician, after discharging 
himself of his trust up stairs, rejoined 
Bar in the street, he said no more of his 
interview with Mrs. Merdle than that 
he had not yet told her all, but that 
what he had told her, she had borne 
pretty well. Bar had devoted his leisure 
in the street to the construction of a most 
ingenious man-trap for catching the 
whole of his Jury at a blow ; having got 
that matter settled in his mind, it was 
lucid on the late catastrophe, and they 
walked home slowly, discussing it in 
every bearing. Before parting, at Phy- 
sician’s door, they both looked up at the 
sunny morning sky, into which the 
smoke of a few early fires, and the breath 
and voices of a few early stirrers, were 
peacefully rising, and then looked round 
upon the immense city, and said. If all 
those hundreds and thousands of beg- 
gared people who were yet asleep could 
only know, as they two spoke, the ruin 
that impended over them, what a fear- 
ful cry against one miserable soul would 
go up to Heaven ! 


412 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


The report that the great man was 
dead got about with astonishing rapid- 
ity. At first, he was dead of all the dis- 
eases that ever were known, and of 
several bran-new maladies invented with 
the speed of Light to meet the demand 
of the occasion. He had concealed a 
dropsy from infancy, he had inherited a 
large estate of water on the chest from 
his grandfather, he had had an opera- 
tion performed upon him every morning 
of his life for eighteen years, he had 
been subject to the explosion of impor- 
tant veins in his body after the manner 
of fireworks, he had had something the 
matter with his lungs, he had had some- 
thing the matter with his heart, he had 
had something the matter with his brain. 
Five hundred people who sat down to 
breakfast entirely uninformed on the 
whole subject believed, before they had 
done breakfast, that they privately and 
personally knew Physician to bave said 
to Mr. Merdle, “You must expect to go 
out, some day, like the snuff of a can- 
dle,” and that they knew Mr. Merdle 
to have said to Physician, “A man 
can die but once.” By about eleven 
o’clock in the forenoon, something the 
matter with the brain became the favor- 
ite theory against the field ; and by 
twelve the something had been distinct- 
ly ascertained to be “ Pressure.” 

Pressure was so entirely satisfactory 
to the public mind, and seemed to make 
everybody so comfortable, that it might 
have lasted all day but for Bar’s having 
taken the real state of the case into 
Court at half past nine. This led to its 
beginning to be currently whispered all 
over London by about one, that Mr. 
Merdle had killed himself. Pressure, 
however, so far from being overthrown 
by the discovery, became a greater fa- 
vorite than ever. There was a general 
moralizing upon Pressure, in every 
street. All the people who had tried to 
make money and had not been able to 
do it, said, There you were ! You no 
sooner began to devote yourself to the 
pursuit of wealth, than you got Pressure. 
The idle people improved the occasion 
in a similar manner. See, said they, 
what you brought yourself to by work, 
work, work ! You persisted in work- 
ing, you overdid it, Pressure came on, 


and you were done for ! This con- 
sideration was very potent in many 
quarters, but nowhere more so than 
among the young clerks and partners 
who had never been in the slightest 
danger of overdoing it. These one and 
all declared, quite piously, that they 
hoped they would never forget the 
warning as long as they lived, and that 
their conduct might be so regulated as 
to keep off Pressure, and preserve them, 
a comfort to their friends, for many 
years. 

But at about the time of High 
’Change, Pressure began to wane, and 
appalling whispers to circulate, east, 
west, north, and south. At first they 
w'ere faint, and went no further than a 
doubt whether Mr. Merdle’s wealth 
would be found to be as vast as had 
been supposed ; w hether there might 
not be a temporary difficulty in “ realiz- 
ing ” it ; whether there might not even 
be a temporary suspension (say a month 
or so), on the part of the wonderful 
Bank. As the whispers became louder, 
which they did from that time every 
minute, they became more threatening. 
He had sprung from nothing, by no 
natural growth or process that any one 
could account for; he had been, after 
all, a low, ignorant fellow ; he had been 
a down-looking man, and no one had 
ever been able to catch his eye ; he had 
been taken up by all sorts of people, in 
quite an unaccountable manner ; he had 
never had any money of his own, his 
ventures had been utterly reckless, and 
his expenditure had been most enor- 
mous. In steady progression, as the 
day declined, the talk rose in sound and 
purpose. He had left a letter at the 
Baths addressed to his physician, and 
his physician had got the letter, and the 
letter would be produced at the Inquest 
on the morrow, and it would fall like a 
thunderbolt upon the multitude he had 
deluded. Numbers of men in every 
profession and trade would be blighted 
by his insolvency ; old people who had 
been in easy circumstances all their 
lives w'ould have no place of repentance 
for their trust in him but the workhouse ; 
legions of women and children would 
have their whole future desolated by 
the hand of this mighty scoundrel. 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


4i3 


Every partaker of bis magnificent feasts 
would be seen to have been a sharer in 
the plunder of innumerable homes ; ev- 
ery servile worshipper of riches who 
had helped to set him on his pedestal 
would have done better to worship the 
Devil point-blank. So the talk, lashed 
louder and higher by confirmation on 
confirmation, and by edition after edi- 
tion of the evening papers, swelled into 
such a roar, when night came, as might 
have brought one to believe that a 
solitary watcher on the gallery above 
the Dome of Saint Paul’s would have 
perceived the night air to be laden with 
a heavy muttering of the name of Mer- 
dle, coupled with every form of exe- 
cration. 

For by that time it was known that 
the late Mr. Merdle’s complaint had 
been, simply, Forgery and Robbery. 
He, the uncouth object of such wide- 
spread adulation, the sitter at great 
men’s feasts, the roc’s egg of great 
ladies’ assemblies, the subduer of ex- 
clusiveness, the leveller of pride, the 
patron of patrons, the bargain-driver 
with a Minister for Lordships of the 
Circumlocution Office, the recipient of 
more acknowledgment within some ten 
or fifteen years, at most, than had 
been bestowed in England upon all 
peaceful public benefactors, and upon 
all the leaders of all the Arts and Sci- 
ences, with all their works to testify 
for them, during two centuries at least, 
— he, the shining wonder, the new 
constellation to be followed by the wise 
men bringing gifts, until it stopped 
over certain carrion at the bottom of 
a bath and disappeared, — was simply 
the greatest Forger and the greatest 
Thief that ever cheated the gallows. 


CHAPTER XXVI. 

REAPING THE WHIRLWIND. 

With a precursory sound of hurried 
breath and hurried feet, Mr. Pancks 
rushed into Arthur Clennam’s count- 
ing-house. The Inquest was over, the 
letter was public, the Bank was bro- 
ken, the other model structures of straw 


had taken fire and were turned to 
smoke. The admired piratical ship 
had blown up, in the midst of a vast 
fleet of ships of all rates, and boats of 
all sizes ; and on the deep was nothing 
but ruin ; nothing but burning hulls, 
bursting magazines, great guns self- 
exploded tearing friends and neighbors 
to pieces, drowning men clinging to 
unseaworthy spars and going down 
every minute, spent swimmers, floating 
dead, and sharks. 

The usual diligence and order of the 
counting-house at the Works were 
overthrown. Unopened letters and 
unsorted papers lay strewn about the 
desk. In the midst of these tokens of 
pro-rated energy and dismissed hope, 
the master of the counting-house stood 
idle in his usual place, with his arms 
crossed on the desk, and his head 
bowed down upon them. 

Mr. Pancks rushed in and saw him 
and stood still. In another minute, 
Mr. Pancks’s arms were on the desk, 
and Mr. Pancks’s head was bowed 
down upon them ; and for some time 
they remained in these attitudes, idle 
and silent, with the width of the little 
room between them. 

Mr. Pancks was the first to lift up 
his head and speak. 

“ I persuaded you to it, Mr. Clen- 
nam. I know it. Say what you will. 
You can’t say more to me than I say 
to myself. You can’t say more than 
I deserve.” 

“ O Pancks, Pancks ! ” returned 
Clennam, “ don’t speak of deserving. 
What do I myself deserve ! ” 

“ Better luck,” said Pancks. 

** I,” pursued Clennam, without at- 
tending to him, “who have ruined my 
partner ! Pancks, Pancks, I have 
ruined Doyce ! The honest, self-help- 
ful, indefatigable old man, who has 
worked his way all through his life; 
the man who has contended against so 
much disappointment, and who has 
brought out of it such a good and hope- 
ful nature : the man I have felt so much 
for, and meant to be so true and useful 
to; I have ruined him — brought him 
to shame and disgrace — ruined him, 
ruined him ! ” 

The agony into which the reflection 


414 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


wrought his mind was so distressing 
to see, that Mr. Pancks took hold of 
himself by the hair of his head, and 
tore it in desperation at the spectacle. 

“ Reproach me ! ” cried Pancks, — 
“reproach me, sir, or I ’ll do myself an 
injury. Say, You fool, you villain. 
Say, Ass, how could you do it, Beast, 
what did you mean by it ! Catch hold 
of me somewhere. Say something abu- 
sive to me ! ” All the time, Mr. 
Pancks was tearing at his tough hair in 
a most pitiless and cruel manner. 

“If you had never yielded to this 
fatal mania, Pancks,” said Clennam, 
more in commiseration than retaliation, 
“it would have been how much bet- 
ter for you, and how much better, for 
me ! ” 

“ At me again, sir ! ” cried Pancks, 
grinding his teeth in remorse, — “ at me 
again ! ” 

“ If you had never gone into those 
accursed calculations, and brought out 
your results with such abominable clear- 
ness,” groaned Clennam, “ it would 
have been how much better for you 
Pancks, and how much better for 
me ! ’ ’ 

“ At me again, sir ! ” exclaimed 
Pancks, loosening his hold of his hair, 
— “ at me again, and again ! ” 

Clennam, however, finding him 
already beginning to be pacified, had 
said all he wanted to say, and more. 
He wrung his hand, only adding, 
“ Blind leaders of the blind, Pancks ! 
Blind leaders of the blind ! But Doyce, 
Doyce, Doyce ; my injured partner ! ” 
That brought his head down on the desk 
once more. 

Their former attitudes and their for- 
mer silence were once more first en- 
croached upon by Pancks. 

“Not been to bed, sir, since it began 
to get about. Been high and low, on 
the chance of finding some hope of sav- 
ing any cinders from the fire. All in 
vain. All gone. All vanished.” 

“ I know it,” returned Clennam, “ too 
well.” 

Mr. Pancks filled up a pause with a 
groan that came out of the very depths 
of his soul. 

“Only yesterday, Pancks,” said Ar- 
thur, — “ only yesterday, Monday, I had 


the fixed intention of selling, realizing, 
and making an end of it.” 

“ I can’t say as much for myself, sir,” 
returned Pancks. “ Though it ’s won- 
derful how many people I ’ve heard of 
who were going to realize yesterday, of 
all days in the three hundred and sixty- 
five, if it hadn’t been too late ! ” 

His steam-like breathings, usually 
droll in their effect, were more tragic 
than so many groans ; while, from head 
to foot, he was in that begrimed, be- 
smeared, neglected state, that he might 
have been an authentic portrait of Mis- 
fortune which could scarcely be dis- 
cerned through its want of cleaning. 

“Mr. Clennam, had you laid out — 
everything ? ” He got over the break 
before the last word, and also brought 
out the last word itself, with great diffi- 
culty. 

“ Everything.” 

Mr. Pancks took hold of his tough 
hair again, and gave it such a wrench 
that he pulled out several prongs of it. 
After looking at these with an eye of 
wild hatred, he put them in his pocket. 

“ My course,” said Clennam, brushing 
away some tears that had been silently 
dropping down his face, “ must be taken 
at once. What wretched amends I can 
make must be made. I must clear my 
unfortunate partner’s reputation. I 
must retain nothing for myself. I must 
resign to our creditors the power of 
management I have so much abused, 
and I must work out as much of my 
fault — or crime — as is susceptible of 
being worked out, in the rest of my 
days.” 

“ Is it impossible, sir, to tide over the 
present? ” 

“ Out of the question. Nothing can 
be tided over now, Pancks. The soon- 
er the business can pass out of my 
hands, the better for it. There are 
engagements to be met, this week, 
which w'ould bring the catastrophe be- 
fore many days were over, even if I 
would postpone it for a single day, by 
going on for that space, secretly know- 
ing what I know. All last night I 
thought of what I would do ; what 
remains is to do it.” 

“Not entirely of yourself?” said 
Pancks, w hose face was as damp as if 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


4i5 


his steam were turning into water as fast 
as he dismally blew it off. “ Have 
some legal help.” 

“ Perhaps I had better.” 

“Have Rugg.” 

“There is not much to do. He will 
do it as well as another.” 

“ Shall I fetch Rugg, Mr. Clennam?” 

“ If you could spare the time. I 
should be much obliged to you.” 

Mr. Pancks put on his hat that mo- 
ment, and steamed away to Pentonville. 
While he was gone, Arthur never raised 
his head from the desk, but remained 
in that one position. 

Mr. Pancks brought his friend and 
professional adviser Mr. Rugg back 
with him. Mr. Rugg had had such 
ample experience, on the road, of Mr. 
Pancks’s being at that present in an 
irrational state of mind, that he opened 
his professional mediation by request- 
ing that gentleman to take himself out 
of the way. Mr.* Pancks, crushed and 
submissive, obeyed. 

“He is not unlike what my daughter 
was, sir, when we began the Breach of 
Promise action of Rugg and Bawkins, 
in which she was Plaintiff,” said Mr. 
Rugg. “ He takes too strong and di- 
rect an interest in the case. His feel- 
ings are worked upon. There is no 
getting on, in our profession, with feel- 
ings worked upon, sir.” 

As he pulled off his gloves and put 
them in his hat, he saw in a side glance 
or two, that a great change had come 
over his client. 

“I am sorry to perceive, sir,” said 
Mr. Rugg, “ that you have been allow- 
ing your own feelings to be worked 
upon. Now, pray don’t, pray don’t. 
These losses are much to be deplored, 
sir, but we must look ’em in the 
face.” 

“If the money I have sacrificed had 
been all my own, Mr. Rugg,” sighed 
Clennam, “ I should have cared far 
less.” 

“Indeed, sir?” said Mr. Rugg, rub- 
bing his hands with a cheerful air. 
“You surprise me. That’s singular, 
sir. I have generally found, in my ex- 
perience, that it ’s their own money 
people are most particular about. I 
have seen people get rid of a good deal 


of other people’s money, and bear it 
very well, very well indeed.” 

With these comforting remarks, Mr. 
Rugg seated himself on an office stool 
at the desk and proceeded to business. 

“ Now, Mr. Clennam, by your leave 
let us go into the matter. Let us see 
the state of the case. The question is 
simple. The question is the usual 
plain, straightforward, common-sense 
question. What can we do for ourself? 
What can we do for ourself? ” 

“That is not the question with me, 
Mr. Rugg,” said Arthur. “You mis- 
take it in the beginning. It is, what 
can I do for my partner, how can I best 
make reparation to him ? ” 

“I am afraid, sir, do you know,” ar- 
gued Mr. Rugg, persuasively, “ that 
you are still allowing your feelings to 
be worked upon ? I don't like the term 
‘reparation,’ sir, except as a lever in 
the hands of counsel. Will you excuse 
my saying that I feel it my duty to offer 
you the caution, that you really must 
not allow your feelings to be worked 
upon ? ” 

“Mr. Rugg,” said Clennam, nerving 
himself to go through with what he had 
resolved upon, and surprising that gen- 
tleman by appearing, in his desponden- 
cy, to have a settled determination of 
purpose ; “ you give me the impression 
that you will not be much disposed to 
adopt the course I have made up my 
mind to take. If your disapproval of it 
should render you unwilling to dis- 
charge such business as it necessitates, 
I am sorry for it, and must seek other 
aid. But I will represent to you at 
once, that to argue against it with me 
is useless.” . 

“Good, sir,” answered Mr. Rugg, 
shrugging his shoulders, — “good, sir. 
Since the business is to be done by 
some hands, let it be done by mine. 
Such was my principle in the case of 
Rugg and Bawkins. Such is my prin- 
ciple in most cases.” 

Clennam then proceeded to state to 
Mr. Rugg his fixed resolution. He 
told Mr, Rugg that his partner was a 
man of great simplicity and integrity, 
and that, in all he meant to do, he 
was guided above all things by a 
knowledge of his partner’s character, 


416 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


and a respect for his feelings. He ex- 
plained that his partner was then ab- 
sent on an enterprise of importance, and 
that it particularly behooved himself 
publicly to accept the blame of what he 
had rashly done, and publicly to exon- 
erate his partner from all participation 
in the responsibility of it, lest the suc- 
cessful conduct of that enterprise should 
be endangered by the slightest suspi- 
cion wrongfully attaching to his part- 
ner’s honor and credit in another coun- 
try. He told Mr. Rugg that to clear 
his partner morally, to the fullest ex- 
tent, and publicly and unreservedly to 
declare that he, Arthur Clennam, of 
that Firm, had of his own sole act, and 
even expressly against his partner’s 
caution, embarked its resources in the 
swindles that had lately perished, was 
the only real atonement within his pow- 
er ; was a better atonement to the par- 
ticular man than it would be to many 
men ; and was therefore the atonement 
he had first to make. With this view, 
his intention was to print a declaration 
to the foregoing effect, which he had 
already drawn up ; and, besides circu- 
lating it among all who had dealings 
with the House, to advertise it in the 
public papers. Concurrently with this 
measure (the description of which cost 
Mr. Rugg innumerable wry faces and 
great uneasiness in his limbs), he would 
address a letter to all the creditors, ex- 
onerating his partner in a solemn man- 
ner, informing them of the stoppage of 
the House until their pleasure could be 
known and his partner communicated 
with, and humbly submitting himself to 
their direction. If, through their con- 
sideration for his partner’s innocence, 
the affairs could ever be got into such 
train as that the business could be 
profitably resumed, and its present 
downfall overcome, then his own share 
in it should revert to his partner, as the 
only reparation he could make to him 
in money value for the distress and loss 
he had unhappily brought upon him, 
and he himself, at as small a salary as 
he could live upon, would ask to be 
allowed to serve the business as a faith- 
ful clerk. 

Though Mr. Rugg saw plainly that 
there was no preventing this from being 


done, still the wryness of his face and 
the uneasiness of his limbs so sorely 
required the propitiation of a Protest, 
that ffe made one. “ I offer no objec- 
tion, sir,” said he, “ I argue no point 
with you. I will carry out your views, 
sir; but, under protest.” Mr. Rugg 
then stated, not without prolixity, the 
heads of his protest. These were, in 
effect, Because the whole town, or he 
might say the whole country, was in 
the first madness of the late discover)', 
and the resentment against the victims 
would be very strong ; those who had 
not been deluded being certain to wax 
exceedingly wroth with them for not 
having been as wise as they were ; and 
those who had been deluded, being cer- 
tain to find excuses and reasons for 
themselves, of which they were equally 
certain to see that other sufferers were 
wholly devoid ; not to mention the great 
probability, of every individual sufferer 
persuading himself, tb his violent in- 
dignation, that but for the example of 
all the other sufferers he never would 
have put himself in the way of suffering. 
Because such a declaration as Clen- 
nam’s, made at such a time, would cer- 
tainly draw down upon him a storm of 
animosity, rendering it impossible to cal- 
culate on forbearance in the creditors, 
or on unanimity among them ; and ex- 
posing him a solitary target to a strag- 
gling cross-fire, which might bring him 
down from half a dozen quarters at once. 

To all this Clennam merely replied 
that, granting the whole protest, noth- 
ing in it lessened the force, or could 
lessen the force, of the voluntary and 
public exoneration of his partner. He 
therefore, once for all, requested Mr. 
Rugg’s immediate aid in getting the 
business despatched. Upon that, Mr. 
Rugg fell to work ; and Arthur, re- 
taining no property to himself but his 
clothes and books, and a little loose 
money, placed his small private bank- 
er’s account with the papers of the 
business. 

The disclosure was made, and the 
storm raged fearfully. Thousands of 
people were wildly staring about for 
somebody alive to heap reproaches on ; 
and this notable case, courting publici- 
ty, set the living somebody so much 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


4i7 


wanted on a scaffold. When people 
W'ho had nothing to do with the case 
were so sensible of its flagrancy, people 
who had lost money by it could scarcely 
be expected to deal mildly with it. Let- 
ters of reproach and invective showered 
in from the creditors ; and Mr. Rugg, 
who sat upon the high stool every day 
and read them all, informed his client 
W'ithin a week that he feared there were 
writs out. 

“ I must take the consequences of 
what I. have done,” said Clennam. 
“ The writs will find me here.” 

On the very next morning, as he was 
turning in Bleeding Heart Yard by Mrs. 
Plornish’s corner, Mrs. Plornish stood 
at the door waiting for him, and mys- 
teriously besought him to step into Hap- 
py Cottage. There he found Mr. Rugg. 

“I thought I’d wait for you here. 
I would n’t go on to the counting-house 
this morning if I was you, sir.” 

“Why not, Mr. Rugg?” 

“ There are as many as five out, to 
my knowledge.” 

“It cannot be too soon over,” s&id 
Clennam. “ Let them take me at 
once.” 

“Yes, but,” said Mr. Rugg, getting 
between him and the door, “ hear rea- 
son, hear reason. They ’ll take you 
soon enough, Mr. Clennam, I don’t 
doubt ; but hear reason. It almost al- 
ways happens, in these cases, that some 
insignificant matter pushes itself in front 
and makes much of itself. Now, I find 
there ’s a little one out, — a mere Palace 
Court jurisdiction, — and I have reason 
to believe that a caption may be made 
upon that. I would n’t be taken upon 
that.” 

“Why not?” asked Clennam. 

“ I ’d be taken on a full-grown one, 
sir,” said Mr. Rugg. “ It’s as well to 
keep up appearances. As your profes- 
sional adviser, I should prefer your be- 
ing taken on a writ from one of the Su- 
perior Courts, if you have no objection 
to do me that favor. It looks better.” 

“ Mr. Rugg,” said Arthur, in his de- 
jection, “ my only wish is, that it should 
be over. I will go on, and take my 
chance.” 

“ Another word of reason, sir ! ” 
cried Mr. Rugg. “ Now, this is rea- 


son. The other may be taste ; but this 
is reason. If you should be taken on 
the little one, sir, you would go to the 
Marshalsea.. Now, you know what the 
Marshalsea is. Very close. Excessive- 
ly confined. Whereas in the King’s 
Bench — ” Mr. Rugg waved his right 
hand freely, as expressing abundance 
of space. 

“ I would rather,” said Clennam, 
“be taken to the Marshalsea than to 
any other prison.” 

“Do you say so indeed, sir?” re- 
turned Mr. Rugg. “ Then this is taste, 
too, and we may be walking.” 

He was a little offended at first, but 
he soon overlooked it. They walked 
through the Yard to the other end. 
The Bleeding Hearts were more inter- 
ested in Arthur since his reverses than 
formerly, now regarding him as one 
who was true to the place and had ta- 
ken up his freedom. Many of them 
came out to look after him, and to ob- 
serve to one another, with great unc- 
tuousness, that he was “pulled down by 
it.” Mrs. Plornish and her father stood 
at the top of the steps at their own end, 
much depressed and shaking their heads. 

There was nobody visibly in waiting 
when Arthur and Mr. Rugg arrived at 
the counting-house. But an elderly 
member of the Jewish persuasion, pre- 
served in rum, followed them close, and 
looked in at the glass before Mr. Rugg 
had opened one of the day’s letters. 
“ Oh ! ” said Mr. Rugg, looking up, 
“how do you do? Step in. — Mr. 
Clennam, I think this is the gentleman 
I was mentioning.” 

The gentleman explained the object 
of his visit to be “ a tyfling madder ob 
bithznithz,” and executed his legal 
function. 

“ Shall I accompany you, Mr. Clen- 
nam?” asked Mr. Rugg, politely, rub- 
bing his hands. 

“ I would rather go alone, thank you. 
Be so good as send me my clothes.” 
Mr. Rugg in a light airy way replied in 
the affirmative, and shook hands with 
him. He and his attendant then went 
down stairs, got into the first convey- 
ance they found, and drove to the old 
gates. 

“Where I little thought, Heaven 


418 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


forgive me,” said Clennam to himself, 
“ that I should ever enter thus ! ” 

Mr. Chivery was on the lock, and 
Young John was in the lodge : either 
newly released from it, or waiting to 
take his own spell of duty. Both were 
more astonished on seeing who the new 
prisoner was than one might have 
thought turnkeys would have been. 
The elder Mr. Chivery shook hands 
with him in a shamefaced kind of way, 
and said, “ I don’t call to mind, sir, as 
I was ever less glad to see you.” The 
younger Mr. Chivery, more distant, did 
not shake hands with him at all ; he 
stood looking at him in a state of inde- 
cision so observable, that it even came 
within the observation of Clennam with 
his heavy eyes and heavy heart. Pres- 
ently afterwards, Young John disap- 
peared into the jail. 

As Clennam knew enough of- the 
place to know that he was required to 
remain in the lodge a certain time, he 
took a seat in a corner, and feigned to 
be occupied with the perusal of letters 
from his pocket. They did not so en- 
gross his attention but that he saw, 
with gratitude, how the elder Mr. Chiv- 
ery kept the lodge clear of prisoners; 
how he signed to some, with his keys, 
not to come in, how he nudged others 
with his elbow to go out, and how’ he 
made his misery as easy to him as he 
could. 

Arthur w'as sitting with his eyes fixed 
on the floor, recalling the past, brood- 
ing over the present, and not attending 
to either, when he felt himself touched 
upon the shoulder. It was by Young 
John ; and he said, “You can come 
now.” 

He got up and followed Young John. 
When they had gone a step or two 
within the inner iron gate, Young John 
turned and said to him, — 

“You want a room. I have got you 
one.” 

“ I thank you heartily.” 

Young John turned again, and took 
him in at the old doorway, up the old 
staircase, into the old room. Arthur 
stretched out his hand. Young John 
looked at it, looked at him — sternly — 
swelled, choked, and said, — 

“ I don’t know as I can. No, I find I 


can’t. But I thought you ’d like the 
room, and here it is for you.” 

> Surprise at this inconsistent behavior 
yielded when, he was gone (he went 
away directly) to the feelings which the 
empty room awakened in Clennam’s 
wounded breast, and to the crowding 
associations with the one good and 
gentle creature who had sanctified it. 
Her absence in his altered fortunes 
made it, and him in it, so very desolate 
and so much in need of such a face of 
love and truth, that he turned against 
the wall to weep, sobbing out, as his 
heart relieved itself, “ O my Little Dor- 
rit ! ” 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

THE PUPIL OF THE MARSHALSEA. 

The day was sunny, and the Mar- 
shalsea, with the hot noon striking up- 
on it, was unwontedly quiet. Arthur 
Clennam dropped into a solitary arm- 
chair, itself as faded as any debtor in 
the jail, and yielded himself to his 
thoughts. 

In the unnatural peace of having 
gone through the dreaded arrest, and 
got there, — the first change of feeling 
which the prison most commonly in- 
duced, and from which dangerous rest- 
ing-place so many men had slipped 
down to the depths of degradation and 
disgrace, by so many ways, — he could 
think of some passages in his life al- 
most as if he were removed from them 
into another state of existence. Taking 
into account where he was, the interest 
that had first brought him there when 
he had been free to keep away, and the 
gentle presence that was equally insep- 
arable from the walls and bars about 
him and from the impalpable remem- 
brances of his later life which no walls 
or bars could imprison, it was not re- 
markable that everything his memory 
turned upon should bring him round 
again to Little Dorrit. Yet it was re- 
markable to him ; not because of the 
fact itself ; but because of the reminder 
it brought with it, how much the dear 
little creature had influenced his better 
resolutions. 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


4i9 


None of us clearly know to whom or 
to what we are indebted in this wise, 
until some marked stop in the whirling 
wheel of life brings the right percep- 
tion with it. It comes with sickness, it 
comes with sorrow, it comes with the 
loss of the dearly loved, it is one of 
the most frequent uses of adversity. It 
came to Clennam in his adversity, 
strongly and tenderly. “ When I first 
gathered myself together,” he thought, 
“and set something like purpose before 
my jaded eyes, whom had I before me, 
toiling on, for a good object’s sake, 
without encouragement, without notice, 
against ignoble obstacles that would 
have turned an army of received heroes 
and heroines? One weak girl ! When 
I tried to conquer my misplaced love, 
and to be generous to the man who was 
more fortunate than I, though he should 
never know it or repay me with a gra- 
cious word, in whom had I watched pa- 
tience, self-denial, self-subdual, charita- 
ble construction, the noblest generosity 
of the affections ? In the same poor 
girl ! If I, a man, with a man’s advan- 
tages and means and energies, had slight- 
ed the whisper in my heart, that if my 
father had erred, it was my first duty to 
conceal the fault and to repair it, what 
youthful figure with tender feet going 
almost bare on the damp ground, with 
spare hands ever w r orking, with its 
slight shape but half protected from the 
sharp weather, would have stood before 
me to put me to shame? Little Dor- 
rit’s.” So always, as he sat alone in 
the faded chair, thinking. Always, Little 
Dorrit. Until it seemed to him as if he 
met the reward of having wandered 
away from her, and suffered anything 
to pass between him and his remem- 
brance of her virtues. 

His door was opened, and the head 
of the elder Chi very was put in a very 
little way, without being turned towards 
him. 

“I am off the lock, Mr. Clennam, 
and going out. Can I do anything for 
you? ” 

“Many thanks. Nothing.” 

“You’ll excuse me opening the 
door,” said Mr. Chivery ; “but -I 
could n’t make you hear ” 

“Did you knock?” 


“ Haifa dozen times.” 

Rousing himself, Clennam observed 
that the prison had awakened from its 
noontide doze, that the inmates were 
loitering about the shady yard, and that 
it was Tate in the afternoon. He had 
been thinking for hours. 

“ Your things is come,” said Mr. 
Chivery, “ and my son is going to car- 
ry ’em up. I should have sent ’em up, 
but for his wishing to carry ’em himself. 
Indeed he would have ’em himself, 
and so I could n’t send ’em up. Mr. 
Clennam, could I say a word to 
you ? ” 

“Pray come in,” said Arthur; for 
Mr. Chivery’s head was still put in at 
the door a very little way, and Mr. 
Chivery had but one ear upon him, in- 
stead of both eyes. This was native 
delicacy in Mr. Chivery, — true polite- 
ness ; though his exterior had very 
much of a turnkey about it, and not the 
least of a gentleman. 

“ Thank you, sir,” said Mr. Chivery, 
without advancing ; “ it ’s no odds me 
coming in. Mr. Clennam, don’t you 
take no notice of my son (if you ’ll be 
so good) in case you find him cut up 
any ways difficult. My son has a art, 
and my son’s art is in the right place. 
Me and his mother knows where to 
find it, and we find it sitiwated cor- 
rect.” 

With this mysterious speech, Mr. 
Chivery took his ear away and shut the 
door. He might have been gone ten 
minutes, when his son succeeded him. 

“ Here ’s your portmanteau,” he said 
to Arthur, putting it carefully down. 

“It’s very kind of ygu. I am 
ashamed that you should have the trou- 
ble.” 

He was gone before it came to that ; 
but soon returned, saying exactly as 
before, “Here’s your black box”; 
which he also put down with care. 

“ I am very sensible of this attention. 
I hope we may shake hands now, Mr. 
John.” 

Young John, however, drew back, 
turning his right wrist in a socket made 
of his left thumb and middle finger, and 
said as he had said at first, “ 1 don’t 
know as I can. No ; I find I can’t ! ” 
He then stood regarding the prisoner 


420 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


sternly, though with a swelling humor 
in his eyes that looked like pity. 

“ Why are you angry with me,” said 
Clennam, “ and yet so ready to do me 
these kind services? There must be 
some mistake between us. If I have 
done anything to occasion it I am sor- 
ry.” 

“No mistake, sir,” returned John, 
turning the WTist backwards and for- 
wards in the socket, for which it was 
rather tight, — “no mistake, sir, in the 
feelings with which my eyes behold you 
at the present moment ! If I was at 
all fairly equal to your weight, Mr. 
Clennam — which I am not ; and if you 
were n’t under a cloud — which you are ; 
and if it wasn’t against all rules of the 
Marshalsea — which it is; those feel- 
ings are such, that they would stimulate 
me more to having it out with you in a 
Round on the present spot than to 
anything else I could name.” 

Arthur looked at him for a moment 
in some wonder, and some little anger. 
“Well, well!” he said. “A mistake, 
a mistake ! ” Turning away, he sat 
down, with a heavy sigh, in the faded 
chair again. 

Young John followed him with his 
eyes, and, after a short pause, cried out, 
“ I beg your pardon ! ” 

“Freely granted,” said Clennam, 
waving his hand, without raising his 
sunken head. “ Say no more. I am 
not worth it.” 

“ This furniture, sir,” said Young 
John in a voice of mild and soft expla- 
nation, “belongs to me. I am in the 
habit of letting it out to parties without 
furniture that have the room. It ain’t 
much, but it ’s at your service. Free, I 
mean. I could not think of letting you 
have it on any other terms. You’re 
welcome to it for nothing.” 

Arthur raised his head again, to thank 
him, and to say he could not accep.t the 
favor. John was still turning his wrist,, 
and still contending with himself in his 
former divided manner. 

“ What is the matter between us ? ” 
said Arthur. 

“ I decline to name it, sir,” returned 
Young John, suddenly turning loud and 
sharp. “ Nothing ’s the matter.” 

Arthur looked at him again, in vain, 


for any explanation of his behavior. 
After a while, Arthur turned away his 
head again. Young John said, pres- 
ently afterwards, with the utmost mild- 
ness, — 

“ The little round table, sir, that ’s 
nigh your elbow, was — you know 
whose — I need n’t mention him — he 
died, a great gentleman. I bought it 
of an individual that he gave it to, and 
that lived here after him. But the in- 
dividual wasn’t any ways equal to him. 
Most individuals would find it hard to 
come up to his level.” 

Arthur drew the little table nearer, 
rested his arm upon it, and kept it 
there. 

. “ Perhaps you may not be aware, 
sir,” said Young John, “that I intruded 
upon him when he was over here in 
London. On the whole he was of 
opinion that it was an intrusion, though 
he was so good as to ask me to sit down 
and to inquire after father and all other 
old friends. Leastways humblest ac- 
quaintances. He looked, to me, a good 
deal changed, and I said so when I 
came back. I asked him if Miss Amy 
was well — ” 

“ And she was? ” 

“ I should have thought you would 
have known, without putting the ques- 
tion to such as me,” returned Young 
John, after appearing to take a large 
invisible pill. “ Since you do put the 
question, I am sorry I can’t answer it. 
But the truth is, he looked, upon the 
inquiry as a liberty, and said, ‘ What 
was that to me?’ It was then I be- 
came quite aware I was intruding, of 
which I had been fearful before. How- 
ever, he spoke very handsome after- 
wards, — very handsome.” 

They were both silent for several 
minutes, except that Young John re- 
marked, at about the middle of the 
pause, “He both spoke and acted very 
handsome.” 

It was again Young John who broke 
the silence, by inquiring, — 

“If it ’s not a liberty, how long may 
it be your intentions, sir, to go without 
eating and drinking ? ” 

“ I have not felt the want of anything 
yet,” returned Clennam. “ I have no 
appetite just now.” 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


421 


“ The more reason why you should 
take some support, sir,” urged Young 
John. “If you find yourself going on 
sitting here for hours and hours par- 
taking of no refreshment because you 
have no appetite, why, then you should 
and must partake of refreshment with- 
out an appetite. I ’m going to have 
tea in my own apartment. If it’s not 
a liberty, please to come and take a 
cup. Or I can bring a tray here in two 
minutes.” 

Feeling that Young John would im- 
pose that trouble on himself if he re- 
fused, and also feeling anxious to show 
that he bore in mind both the elder Mr. 
Chivery’s entreaty, and the younger Mr. 
Chivery’s apology, Arthur rose and ex- 
pressed his willingness to take a cup of 
tea in Mr. John’s apartment. Young 
John locked his door for him as they 
went out, slided the key into his pocket 
with great dexterity, and led the way to 
his own residence. 

It was at the top of the house nearest 
to the gateway. It was the room to 
which Clennam had hurried, on the 
day when the enriched family had left 
the prison forever, and where he had 
lifted her insensible from the floor. He 
foresaw where they were going as soon 
as their feet touched the staircase. 
The room was so far changed that it 
was papered now, and had been re- 
painted, and was far more comfortably 
furnished; but he could recall it just 
as he had seen it in that single glance, 
when he raised her from the ground 
and carried her down to the carriage. 

Young John looked hard at him, bit- 
ing his fingers. 

“I see you recollect the room, Mr. 
Clennam? ” 

“ I recollect it well, Heaven bless 
her ! ” 

Oblivious of the tea, Young John 
continued to bite his fingers and to look 
at his visitor, as long as his visitor con- 
tinued to glance about the room. Fi- 
nally, he made a start at the teapot, 
gustily rattled a quantity of tea into it 
from a canister, and set off for the com- 
mon kitchen to fill it with hot water. 

The room was so eloquent to Clen- 
nam, in the changed circumstances of his 
return to the miserable Marshalsea, — 


it spoke to him so mournfully of her, and 
of his loss of her, — that it would have 
gone hard with him to resist it, even 
though he had not been alone. Alone, 
he did not try. He laid his hand on the 
insensible wall as tenderly as if it had 
been herself that he touched, and pro- 
nounced her name in a low voice. He 
stood at the window, looking over the 
prison parapet with its grim spiked bor- 
der, and breathed a benediction through 
the summer haze towards the distant 
land where she was rich and prosper- 
ous. 

Young John was some time absent, 
and, when he came back, showed that 
lie had been outside, by bringing with 
him fresh butter in a cabbage - leaf, 
some thin slices of boiled ham in an- 
other cabbage-leaf, and a little basket 
of water-cresses and salad herbs. When 
these were arranged upon the table to 
his satisfaction, they sat down to tea. 

Clennam tried to do honor to the meal, 
but unavailingly. The ham sickened 
him, the bread seemed to turn to sand 
in his mouth. Fie could force nothing 
upon himself but a cup of tea. 

“Try a little something green,” said 
Young John, handing him the basket. 

He took a sprig or so of water-cress, 
and tried again ; but the bread turned 
to a heavier sand than before, and the 
ham (though it was good enough of it- 
self) seemed to blow a faint simoom 
of ham through the whole Marshalsea. 

“Try a little more something green, 
sir,” said Young John; and again 
handed the basket. 

It was so like handing green meat in- 
to the cage of a dull imprisoned bird, 
and John had so evidently brought the 
little basket as a handful of fresh relief 
from tire stale hot paving-stones and 
bricks of the jail, that Clennam said, 
with a smile, “It was very kind of you 
to think of putting this between the 
wires ; but I cannot even get this 
down to-day.” 

As if the difficulty were contagious, 
Young John soon pushed away his own 
plate, and fell to folding the cabbage- 
leaf that had contained the ham. When 
he had folded it into a number of layers, 
one over another, so that it was small in 
the palm of his hand, he began to flat- 


422 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


ten it between both his hands, and to 
eye Clennam attentively. 

“I wonder,” he at length said, com- 
pressing his green packet with some 
force, “that if it’s not worth your 
while to take care of yourself for your 
own sake, it ’s not worth doing for 
some one else’s.” 

“Truly,” returned Arthur, with a 
sigh and a smile, “ I don’t know for 
whose.” 

“Mr. Clennam,” said John, warmly, 
“I am surprised that a gentleman who 
is capable of the straightforwardness that 
you are capable of should be capable of 
the mean action of making me such an 
answer. Mr. Clennam, I am surprised 
that a gentleman who is capable of 
having a heart of his own, should be 
capable of the heartlessness of treating 
mine in that way. I am astonished at 
it, sir. Really and truly I am aston- 
ished ! ” 

Having got upon his feet to empha- 
size his concluding words, Young John 
sat down again, and fell to rolling his 
green packet on his right leg ; never 
taking his eyes off Clennam, but sur- 
veying him with a fixed look of indig- 
nant reproach. 

“ I had got over it, sir,” said John. 
“ I had conquered it, knowing that it 
must be conquered, and had come to 
the resolution to think no more about it. 

I shouldn’t have given my mind to it 
again, I hope, if to this prison you had 
not been brought, and in an hour un- 
fortunate for me, this day ! ” (In his 
agitation Young John adopted his 
mother’s powerful construction of sen- 
tences.) “When you first came upon 
me, sir, in the lodge, this day, more 
as if a Upas-tree had been made a 
capture of than a private defendant, 
such mingled streams of feelings broke 
loose again within me that everything 
was for the first few minutes swept 
away before them, and I was going 
round and round in a vortex. I got out 
of it. I struggled and got out of it. If; 
it was the last word I had to speak, 
against that vortex with my utmost 
powers I strove, and out of it I came. 
I argued that if I had been rude, 
apologies was due, and those apologies 
without a question of demeaning, I did 


make. And now, when I ’ve been so 
wishful to show that one thought is 
next to being a holy one with me and 
goes before all others, — now, after all, 
you dodge me when I ever so gently 
hint at it, and throw me back upon 
myself. For, do not, sir,” said Young 
John, — “ do not be so base as to deny 
that dodge you do, and throwu me 
back upon myself you have ! ” 

All amazement, Arthur gazed at him, 
like one lost, only saying, “What is it? 
What do you mean, John ? ” But John, 
being in that state of mind in which 
nothing would seem to be more impossi- 
ble to a certain class of people than the 
giving of an answer, went ahead blindly. 

“I hadn’t,” John declared, “no, I 
had n’t, and I never had, the auda- 
ciousness to think, I am sure, that all 
was anything but lost. I hadn’t, no, 
why should I say I had n’t if I ever 
had, any hope that it was possible to be 
so blest, not after the words that passed, 
not even if barriers insurmountable had 
not been raised ! But is that a reason 
why I am to have no memory, why I 
am to have no thoughts, why I am to 
have no sacred spots, nor anything? ” 

“What can you mean?” cried Ar- 
thur. 

“ It’s all very well to trample on it, 
sir,” John went on, scouring a very 
prairie of wild words, “ if a person can 
make up his mind to be guilty of the 
action. It ’s all very well to trample on 
it, but it’s there. It may be that it 
couldn’t be trampled upon if it wasn’t 
there. But that doesn’t make it gen- 
tlemanly, that does n’t make it honora- 
ble, that doesn’t justify throwing a per- 
son back upon himself after he has 
struggled and strived out of himself, 
like a butterfly. The world may sneer 
at a turnkey, but he ’s' a man, — when 
he is n’t a woman, which among female 
criminals he’s expected to be.” 

Ridiculous as the incoherence of his 
talk was, there was yet a truthfulness in 
Young John’s simple, sentimental char- 
acter, and a sense of being wounded in 
some very tender respect, expressed in 
his burning face and in the agitation of 
his voice and manner, which Arthur 
must have been cruel to disregard. He 
turned his thoughts back to the start- 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


423 


ing-point of this unknown injury ; and 
in the mean time Young John, having 
rolled his green packet pretty round, 
cut it carefully into three pieces, and 
laid it on a plate as if it were some par- 
ticular delicacy. 

“ It seems to me just possible,” said 
Arthur, when he had retraced the con- 
versation to the water-cresses and back 
again, “ that you have made some ref- 
erence to Miss Dorrit ? ” 

“It is just possible, sir,” returned 
John Chivery. 

“ I don’t understand it. I hope I 
may not be so unlucky as to make you 
think I mean to offend you again, for I 
never have meant to offend you yet, 
when I say I don’t understand it.” 

“Sir,” said Young John, “will you 
have the perfidy to deny that you know 
and long have known that I have felt 
towards Miss Dorrit, call it not the pre- 
sumption of love, but adoration and sac- 
rifice ? ” 

“ Indeed, John, I will not have any 
perfidy if I know it; why you should 
suspect me of it, I am at a loss to think. 
Did you ever hear from Mrs. Chivery, 
your mother, that I went to see her 
once ? ” 

“No, sir,” returned John, shortly. 
“ Never heard of such a thing.” 

“ But I did. Can you imagine why ? ” 

“No, sir,” returned John, shortly. 
“ I can’t imagine why.” 

“ I will tell you. I was solicitous to 
promote Miss Dorrit’s happiness ; and 
if I could have supposed that Miss Dor- 
rit returned your affection — ” 

Poor John Chivery turned crimson 
to the tips of his ears. “ Miss Dorrit 
never did, sir. I wish to be honorable 
and true, so far as in my humble way I 
can, and I would scorn to pretend for a 
moment that she ever did, or that she 
ever led me to believe she did ; no, nor 
even that it was ever to be expected in 
any cool reason that she would or could. 
She was far above me in all respects at 
all times. As likewise,” added John, 
“similarly was her gen-teel family.” 

His chivalrous feeling towards all that 
belonged to her made him so very re- 
spectable, in spite of his small stature 
and his rather weak legs, and his very 
weak hair, and his poetical tempera- 


ment, that a Goliath might have sat 
in his place demanding less considera- 
tion at Arthur’s hands. 

“You speak, John,” he said with 
cordial admiration, “like a Man.” 

“ Well, sir,” returned John, brushing 
his hand across his eyes, “ then I wish 
you ’d do the same.” 

He was quick with this unexpected 
retort, and it again made Arthur regard 
him with a wondering expression of 
face. 

“ Leastways,” said John, stretching 
his hand across the tea-tray, “ if too 
strong a remark, withdrawn ! But why 
not, why not ? When I say to you, Mr. 
Clennam, take care of yourself for some 
one else’s sake, why not be open though 
a turnkey? Why did I get you the 
room which I knew you ’d like best ? 
Why did I carry up your things ? Not 
that I found ’em heavy ; I don’t men- 
tion ’em on that accounts ; far from it. 
Why have I cultivated you in the man- 
ner I have done since the morning? 
On the ground of your own mer- 
its? No. They’re very great, I ’ve no 
doubt at all ; but not on the ground of 
them. Another’s merits have had their 
weight, and have had far more weight 
with Me. Then why not speak free ! ” 

“ Unaffectedly, John,” said Clennam, 
“ you are so good a fellow', and I have 
so true a respect for your character, that 
if I have appeared to be less sensible 
than I really am of the fact that the 
kind services you have rendered me to- 
day are attributable to my having been 
trusted by Miss Dorrit as her friend, — 
I confess it to be a fault, and I ask your 
forgiveness.” 

“ O, why not,” John repeated with 
returning scorn, — “why not speak 
free ! ” 

“ I declare to you,” returned Arthur, 
“ that I do not understand you. Look 
at me. Consider the trouble I have 
been in. Is it likely that I would wil- 
fully add to my other self-reproaches 
that of being ungrateful or treacherous 
to you ? I do not understand you.” 

John’s incredulous face slowly soft- 
ened into a face of doubt. He rose, 
backed into the garret-window of the 
room, beckoned Arthur to come there, 
and stood looking at him thoughtfully. 


424 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


“Mr. Clennam, do you mean to say 
that you don’t know? ” 

“What, John?” 

“ Lord,” said Young John, appealing 
with a gasp to the spikes on the wall. 
“ He says, What ! ” 

Clennam looked at the spikes, and 
looked at John ; and looked at the 
spikes, and looked at John. 

“ He says What ! And what is 
more,” exclaimed Young John, survey- 
ing him in a doleful maze, “ he appears 
to mean it ! Do you see this window, 
sir? ” 

* Of course, I see this window.” 

“ See this room? ” 

“ Why, of course I see this room.” 

“That wall opposite, and that yard 
down below ? They have all been wit- 
nesses of it, from day to day, from 
night to night, from week to week, from 
month to month. For how often have 
I seen Miss Dorrit here when she has 
not seen me ! ” 

“Witnesses of what?” said Clen- 
nam. 

“Of Miss Dorrit’s love.” 

“For whom?” 

“You,” said John. And touched 
him with the back of his hand upon the 
breast, and backed to his chair and sat 
down in it with a pale face, holding the 
arms, and shaking his head at him. 

If he had dealt Clennam a heavy 
blow, instead of laying that light touch 
upon him, its effect could not have been 
to shake him more. He stood amazed ; 
his eyes looking at John ; his lips part- 
ed, and seeming now and then to form 
the word “Me!” without uttering it ; 
his hands dropped at his sides ; his 
whole appearance that of a man who 
has been awakened from sleep, and stu- 
pefied by intelligence beyond his full 
comprehension. 

“Me! ” he at length said aloud. 

“ Ah ! ” groaned Young John. 
“You ! ” 

He did what he could to muster a 
smile, and returned, “Your fancy. 
You are completely mistaken.” 

“ I mistaken, sir ! ” said Young John. 
“/ completely mistaken on that sub- 
ject ! No, Mr. Clennam, don’t tell me 
so. On any other, if you like, for I 
don’t set up to be a penetrating charac- 


ter, and am well aware of my oVvn defi- 
ciencies. But / mistaken on a point 
that has caused me more smart in my 
breast than a flight of savages’ arrows 
could have done ! / mistaken on a 

point that almost sent me into my grave, 
as I sometimes wished it would, if the 
grave could -only have been made com- 
patible with the tobacco business and 
father and mother’s feelings ! I mista- 
ken on a point that, even at the present 
moment, makes me take out my pocket- 
handkerchief like a great girl, as people 
say; though I am sure I don’t know why 
a great girl should be a term of reproach, 
for every rightly constituted male mind 
loves ’em great and small ! Don’t tell 
me so, don’t tell me so ! ” 

Still highly respectable at bottom, 
though absurd enough upon the surface, 
Young John took out his pocket-hand- 
kerchief, with a genuine absence both 
of display and concealment, which is 
only to be seen in a man with a great 
deal of good in him, when he takes out 
his pocket-handkerchief for the purpose 
of wiping his eyes. Having dried them, 
and indulged in the harmless luxury of 
a sob and a sniff, he put it up again. 

The touch was still in its influence 
so like a blow, that Arthur could not 
get many words together to close the 
subject with. He assured John Chiv- 
ery, when he had returned his handker- 
chief to his p’ocket, that he did all 
honor to his disinterestedness and to 
the fidelity of his remembrance of Miss 
Dorrit. As to the impression on his 
mind, of which he had just relieved 
it — here John interposed, and said, 
“No impression ! Certainty ! ” — as to 
that, they might perhaps speak of it 
at another time, but would say no more 
now. Feeling low-spirited and weary, 
he would go back to his room, with 
John’s leave, and come out no more 
that night. John assented, and he 
crept back in the shadow of the wall 
to his own lodging. 

The feeling of the blow was still so 
strong upon him, that when the dirty old 
woman was gone whom he found. sitting 
on the stairs outside his door, waiting to 
make his bed, and who gave him to 
understand, while doing it, that she 
had received her instructions from Mr. 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


425 


Chivery, “not the old ’un but the 
young ’un,” he sat down in the faded 
arm-chair, pressing his head between 
his hands, as if he had been stunned. 
Little Dorrit love him ! More bewil- 
dering to him than his misery, far. 

Consider the improbability. He had 
been accustomed to call her his child, 
and his dear child, and to invite her 
confidence by dwelling upon the dif- 
ference in their respective ages, and 
to speak of himself as one who was 
turning old. Yet she might not have 
thought him old. Something reminded 
him that he had not thought himself 
so, until the roses had floated away 
upon the river. 

He had her two letters among other 
papers in his box, and he took them 
out and read them. There seemed to 
be a sound in them like the sound of 
her sweet voice. . It fell upon his ear 
with many tones of tenderness, that 
were not insusceptible of the new mean- 
ing. Now it was, that the quiet deso- 
lation of her answer, “ No, No, No,” 
made to him that night in that very 
room, — that night, when he had been 
shown the dawn of her altered fortune, 
and when other words had passed be- 
tween them which he had been destined 
to remember, in humiliation and a 
prisoner, — rushed into his mind. 

Consider the improbability. 

But it had a preponderating tenden- 
cy, when considered, to become fainter. 
There was another and a curious inqui- 
ry of his own heart’s that concurrently 
became stronger. In the reluctance 
he had felt to believe that she loved 
any one ; in his desire to set that ques- 
tion at rest ; in a half-formed conscious- 
ness he had had, that there would be 
a kind of nobleness in his helping her 
love for any one ; was there no sup- 
pressed something on his own side that 
he had hushed as it arose ? Had he 
ever whispered to himself that he must 
not think of such a thing as her loving 
him, that he must not take advantage 
of her gratitude, that he must keep his 
experience in remembrance as a warn- 
ing and reproof ; that he must regard 
such youthful hopes as having passed 
away, as his friend’s dead daughter 
had passed away; that he must be 


steady in saying to himself that the 
time had gone by him, and he was too 
saddened and old? 

He had kissed her when he raised 
her from the ground, on the day when 
she had been so consistently and ex- 
pressively forgotten. Quite as he 
might have kissed her, if she had been 
conscious? No difference? 

The darkness found him occupied 
with these thoughts. The darkness 
also found Mr. and Mrs. Plomish 
knocking at his door. They brought 
with them a basket, filled with choice 
selections from that stock in trade 
which met with such a quick sale and 
produced such a slow return. Mrs. 
Plomish was affected to tears. Mr. 
Plomish amiably growled, in his phil- 
osophical but not lucid manner, that 
there was ups, you see, and there was 
downs. It was in wain to ask why 
ups, why downs ; there they was, you 
know. He had heerd it given for a 
truth that accordin’ as the world went 
round, which round it did rewolve un- 
doubted, even the best of gentlemen 
must take his turn of standing with his 
ed upside down and all his air a flying 
the wrong way into what you might call 
Space. Wery well then. What Mr. 
Plomish said was, wery well then. 
That gentleman’s ed would come up- 
’ards when his turn come, that gentle- 
man’s air would be a pleasure to look 
upon, being all smooth again, and wery 
well then ! 

It has been already stated that Mrs. 
Plomish, not being philosophical, wept. 
It further happened that Mrs. Plomish, 
not being philosophical, was intelligi- 
ble. It may have arisen out of her 
softened state of mind, out of her sex’s 
wit, out of a woman’s quick associa- 
tion of ideas, or out of a woman’s no 
association of ideas, but it further hap- 
pened somehow that Mrs. Plomish’s 
intelligibility displayed itself upon the 
very subject of Arthur’s meditations. 

“The way father has been talking 
about you, Mr. Clennam,” said Mrs. 
Plomish, “ you hardly would believe. 
It ’s made him quite poorly. As to his 
voice, this misfortune has took it away. 
You know what a sweet singer father is ; 
but he could n’t get a note out for the 


426 


LITTLE D0RR1T. 


children at tea, if you ’ll credit what I 
tell yon.” 

While speaking, Mrs. Plomish shook 
her head, and wiped her eyes, and 
looked retrospectively about the room. 

“ As to Mr. Baptist,” pursued Mrs. 
Plomish ; “ whatever he ’ll do when he 
comes to know of it, I can’t conceive 
nor yet imagine. He ’d have been here 
before now, you may be sure, but that 
he ’s away on confidential business of 
your own. The persevering manner in 
which he follows up that business, and 
gives himself no rest from it, — it really 
do,” said Mrs. Plomish, winding up in 
the Italian manner, “ as I say to him, 
Mooshattonisha padrona.” 

Though not conceited, Mrs. Plomish 
felt that she had turned this Tuscan 
sentence with peculiar elegance. Mr. 
Plornish could not conceal his exulta- 
tion in her accomplishments as a lin- 
guist. 

“ But what I say is, Mr. Clennam,” 
the good woman w T ent on, “there’s 
always something to be thankful for, as 
I am sure you will yourself admit. 
Speaking in this room, it’s not hard to 
think what the present something is. 
It’s a thing to be thankful for, indeed, 
that Miss Dorrit is not here to know 
it.” 

Arthur thought she looked at him 
with particular expression. 

“ It ’s a thing,” reiterated Mrs. Plor- 
nish, “ to be thankful for, indeed, that 
Miss Dorrit is far aw'ay. It ’s to be 
hoped she is not likely to hear of it. If 
she had been here to see it, sir, it ’s not 
to be doubted that the sight of you,” — 
Mrs. Plomish repeated those words, — 
“not to be doubted that the sight of 
you, in misfortune and trouble, w'ould 
have been almost too much for her affec- 
tionate heart. There’s nothing I can 
think of that would have touched Miss 
Dorrit so bad as that.” 

Of a certainty, Mrs. Plomish did look 
at him now, with a sort of quivering 
defiance in her friendly emotion. 

“ Yes ! ” said she. “ And it shows 
what notice father takes, though at his 
time of life, that he says to me this af- 
ternoon, which Happy Cottage knows I 
neither make it up nor any ways enlarge, 

‘ Mary, it ’s much to be rejoiced in 


that Miss Dorrit is not on the spot to 
behold it.’ Those were father’s w'ords. 
Father’s own words was, ‘ Much to be 
rejoiced in, Mary, that Miss Dorrit is 
not on the spot to behold it.’ I says to 
father then, I says to him, ‘ Father, you 
are right ! ’ That,” Mrs. Plomish con- 
cluded with an air of a very precise legal 
witness, “ is what passed betwixt father 
and me. And I tell you nothing but 
what did pass betwixt me and father.” 

Mr. Plomish, as being of a more lacon- 
ic temperament, embraced this opportu- 
nity of interposing with the suggestion 
that she should now leave Mr. Clennam 
to himself. “ For, you see,” said Mr. 
Plomish, gravely, “ I know what it is, 
old gal ” ; repeating that valuable re- 
mark several times, as if it appeared to 
him to include some great moral secret. 
Finally, the worthy couple went away 
arm in arm. 

Little Dorrit, Little Dorrit. Again 
for hours. Always Little Dorrit. 

Happily, if it ever had been so, it was 
over, and better over. Granted, that 
she had loved him, and he had known 
it and had suffered himself to love her, 
what a road to have led her away upon, 
— the road that would have brought 
her back to this miserable place ! He 
ought to be much comforted by the re- 
flection that she was quit of it forever ; 
that she was, or would soon be, married 
(vague rumors of her father’s projects 
in that direction had reached Bleeding 
Heart Yard with the news of her sis- 
ter’s marriage) ; and that the Marshalsea 
gate had shut forever on all those per- 
plexed possibilities of a time that was 
gone. 

Dear Little Dorrit ! 

Looking back upon his own poor 
story, she was its vanishing-point. 
Everything in its perspective led to her 
innocent figure. He had travelled thou- 
sands of miles towards it ; previous 
unquiet hopes and doubts had worked 
themselves out before it ; it was the 
centre of the interest of his life ; it was 
the termination of everything that was 
good and pleasant in it; beyond there 
was nothing but mere waste, and dark- 
ened sky. 

As ill at ease as on the first night of 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


427 


his lying down to sleep within those 
dreary walls, he wore the night out with 
such thoughts. What time Y oung John 


lay wrapt in peaceful slumber, after 
composing and arranging the following 
monumental inscription on his pillow. 


STRANGER ! 

RESPECT THE TOMB OF 

JOHN CHIVERY, Junior, 

WHO DIED AT AN ADVANCED AGE 
NOT NECESSARY TO MENTION. 

HE ENCOUNTERED HIS RIVAL, IN A DISTRESSED STATE, 
AND FELT INCLINED 
TO HAVE A ROUND WITH HIM; 

BUT, FOR THE SAKE OF THE LOVED ONE, 
CONQUERED THOSE FEELINGS OF BITTERNESS, 
AND BECAME 

MAGNANIMOUS. 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 

AN APPEARANCE IN THE MARSHALSEA. 

. The opinion of the community out- 
side the prison gates bore hard on 
Clennam as time went on, and he made 
no friends among the community with- 
in. Too depressed to associate with 
the herd in the yard, who got together 
to forget their cares; too retiring and 
too unhappy to join in the poor sociali- 
ties of the tavern; he kept his own 
room, and was held in distrust. Some 
said he was proud ; some objected that 
he was sullen and reserved ; some were 
contemptuous of him, for that he was a 
poor-spirited dog who pined under his 
debts. The whole population were shy 
of him on these various counts of in- 
dictment, but especially the last, which 
involved a species of domestic treason ; 
and he soon became so confirmed in his 
seclusion, that his only time for walking 
up and down was when the evening 
club were assembled at their songs and 
toasts and sentiments, and when the 
yard was nearly left to the women and 
children. 

Imprisonment began to tell upon him. 
He knew that he idled and moped. 


After what he had known of the influ- 
ences of imprisonment within the four 
small walls of the very room he occu- 
pied, this consciousness made him afraid 
of himself. Shrinking from the obser- 
vation of other men, and shrinking from 
his own, he began to change very sen- 
sibly. Anybody might see . that the 
shadow of the wall was dark upon him. 

One day when he might have been 
some ten or twelve weeks in jail, and 
when he had been trying to read and 
had not been able to release even the 
imaginary people of the book from the 
Marshalsea, a footstep stopped at his 
door, and a hand tapped at it. He 
arose and opened it, and an agreeable 
voice accosted him with, “ How do you 
do, Mr. Clennam? I hope I am not 
unwelcome in calling to see you.” 

It was the sprightly young Barnacle, 
Ferdinand. He looked very good- 
natured and prepossessing, though over- 
poweringly gay and free, in contrast 
with the squalid prison. 

“You are surprised to see me, Mr. 
Clennam,” he said, taking the seat 
which Clennam offered him. 

“ I must confess to being much sur- 
prised.” 

“Not disagreeably, I hope ? ” 


428 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


“ By no means.” 

“Thank you. Frankly,” said the 
engaging young Barnacle, “ I have 
been excessively sorry to hear that you 
were under the necessity of a temporary 
retirement here, and I hope (of course 
as between two private gentlemen) that 
our place has had nothing to do with 
it?” 

“ Your office? ” 

“Our Circumlocution place.” 

“ I cannot charge any part of my 
reverses upon that remarkable estab- 
lishment.” 

“Upon my life,” said the vivacious 
young Barnacle, “ I am heartily glad to 
know it. It is quite a relief to me to 
hear you say it. I should have so ex- 
ceedingly regretted our place having 
had anything to do with your difficul- 
ties.” 

Clennam again assured him that he 
absolved it of the responsibility. 

“That’s right,” said Ferdinand. 
“ I am very happy to hear it. I was 
rather afraid in my own mind that we 
might have helped to floor you, because 
there is no doubt that it is our misfor- 
tune to do that kind of thing now and 
then. We don’t want to do it; but if 
men will be gravelled, why, we can’t 
help it.” 

“ Without giving an unqualified as- 
sent to what you say,” returned Ar- 
thur, gloomily, “ I am much obliged to 
you for your interest in me.” 

“ No, but really ! Our place is,” 
said the easy young Barnacle, “the 
most inoffensive place possible. You ’ll 
say we are a Humbug. I won’t say 
we are not ; but all that sort of thing 
is intended to be, and must be. Don’t 
you see ? ” 

“ I do not,” said Clennam. 

“You don’t regard it from the right 
point of view. It is the point of view 
that is the essential thing. Regard our 
place from the point of view that we 
only ask you to leave us alone, and we 
are as capital a Department as you ’ll 
find anywhere.” 

“ Is your place there to be left 
alone ? ” asked Clennam. 

“You exactly hit it,” returned Ferdi- 
nand. “ It is there with the express 
intention that everything shall be left 


alone. That is what it means. That 
is what it’s for. No doubt there’s a 
certain form to be kept up that it ’s for 
something else, but it’s only a form. 
Why, good Heaven, we are nothing but 
forms ! Think what a lot of our forms 
you have gone through. And you have 
never got any nearer to an end ? ” 

“ Never ! ” said Clennam. 

“ Look at it from the right point of 
view, and there you have us, — official 
and effectual. It ’s like a limited game 
of cricket. A field of outsiders are al- 
ways going in to bowl at the Public 
Service, and we block the balls.” 

Clennam asked what became of the 
bowlers ? Tfie airy young Barnacle 
replied that they grew tired, got dead 
beat, got lamed, got their backs broken, 
died off, gave it up, went in for other 
games. 

“ And this occasions me to congratu- 
late myself again,” he pursued, “on 
the circumstance that our place has had 
nothing to do with your temporary re- 
tirement. It very easily might have 
had a hand in it ; because it is unde- 
niable that we are sometimes a most 
unlucky place in our effects upon peo- 
ple who will not leave us alone. Mr. 
Clennam, I am quite unreserved with 
you. As between yourself and myself, 
I know I may be. I was so, when I 
first saw you making the mistake of not 
leaving us alone ; because I perceived 
that you were inexperienced and san- 
guine, and had — I hope you ’ll not 
object to my saying — some simplici- 
ty?” 

“ Not at all.” _ _ 

“ Some simplicity. Therefore I felt 
what a pity it was, and I went out of 
my way to hint to you (which really 
was not official, but I never am official 
when I can help it), something to the 
effect that if I were you, I would n’t 
bother myself. However, you did both- 
er yourself, and you have since both- 
ered yourself. Now, don’t do it any 
more.” 

“ I am not likely to have the oppor- 
tunity,” said Clennam. 

“ O yes, you are ! You ’ll leave here. 
Everybody leaves here. There are 
no ends of ways of leaving here. Now, 
don’t come back to us. That entreaty 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


429 


is the second object of my call. Pray, 
don’t come back to us. Upon my hon- 
or,” said Ferdinand, in a very friendly 
and confiding way, “ I shall be greatly- 
vexed if you don’t take warning by the 
past and keep away from us.” 

“And the invention?” said Clen- 
nam. 

“ My good fellow,” returned Ferdi- 
nand, “ if you ’ll excuse the freedom of 
that form of address, nobody wants to 
know of the invention, and nobody cares 
twopence-halfpenny about it.” 

“ Nobody in the Office, that is to 
say? ” 

“Nor out of it. Everybody is ready 
to dislike and ridicule any invention. 
You have no idea how many people 
want to be left alone. You have no 
idea the Genius of the country (over- 
look the Parliamentary nature of the 
phrase, and don’t be bored by it) tends 
to being left alone. Believe me, Mr. 
Clennam,” said the sprightly young 
Barnacle, in his pleasantest manner, 
“ our place is not a wicked Giant to be 
charged at full tilt ; but only a wind- 
mill showing you, as it grinds immense 
quantities of chaff, which way the coun- 
try wind blows.” 

“If I could believe that,” said Clen- 
nam, “ it would be a dismal prospect for 
all of us.” 

“ O, don’t say so!” returned Fer- 
dinand. “It’s all right. We must 
have humbug, we all like humbug, we 
couldn’t get on without humbug. A 
little humbug, and a groove, and every- 
thing goes on admirably, if you leave it 
alone.” 

With this hopeful confession of his 
faith as the head of the rising Barna- 
cles who were born of woman, to be fol- 
lowed under a variety of watch-words 
which they utterly repudiated and dis- 
believed, Ferdinand rose. Nothing 
could be more agreeable than his frank 
and courteous bearing, or adapted with 
a more gentlemanly instinct to the cir- 
cumstances of his visit. 

“ Is it fair to ask,” he said, as Clen- 
nam gave him his hand with a real feel- 
ing of thankfulness for his candor and 
good-humor, “whether it is true that 
our late lamented Merdle is the cause 
of this passing inconvenience ? ” 


“ I am one of the many he has ruined. 
Yes.” 

“ He must have been an exceedingly 
clever fellow,” said Ferdinand Barna- 
cle. 

Arthur, not being in a mood to extol 
the memory of the deceased, was si- 
lent. 

“A consummate rascal of course,” 
said Ferdinand, “but remarkably clev- 
er ! One cannot help admiring the fel- 
low. Must have been such a master of 
humbug. Knew people so well, — got 
over them so completely, — did so much 
with them ! ” 

In his easy way he was really moved 
to genuine admiration. 

“ I hope,” said Arthur, “ that he and 
his dupes may be a warning to people 
not to have so much done with them 
again.” 

“ My dear Mr. Clennam,” returned 
Ferdinand, laughing, “ have you really 
such a verdant hope? The next man 
who has as large a capacity and as gen- 
uine a taste for swindling will succeed 
as well. Pardon me, but I think you 
really have no idea how the human 
bees will swarm to the beating of any old 
tin kettle : in that fact lies the complete 
manual of governing them. When they 
can be got to believe that the kettle is 
made of the precious metals, in that fact 
lies the whole power of men like our late 
lamented. No doubt there are here and 
there,” said Ferdinand, politely, “ex- 
ceptional cases, where people have been 
taken in for what appeared to them to 
be much better reasons ; and I need not 
go far to find such a case ; but they 
don’t invalidate the rule. Good day ! 

I hope that when I have the pleasure of 
seeing you next, this passing cloud will 
have given place to sunshine. Don’t 
come a step beyond the door. I know 
the way out perfectly. Good day ! ” 
With those words, the best and bright- 
est of the Barnacles went down stairs, 
hummed his way through the lodge, 
mounted his horse in the front court- 
yard, and rode off to keep an appoint- 
ment with his noble kinsman, — who 
wanted a little coaching before he could 
triumphantly answer certain infidel 
Snobs, who were going to question the 
Nobs about their statesmanship. 

\ 


430 


LITTLE DORR IT. 


He must have passed Mr. Rugg on 
his way out, for a minute or two after- 
wards that ruddy - headed gentleman 
shone in at the door, like an elderly 
Phoebus. 

“ How do you do to-day, sir? ” said 
Mr. Rugg. “ Is there any little thing 
I can do for you to-day, sir ? ” 

“ No, I thank you.” 

Mr. Rugg’s enjoyment of embarrassed 
affairs was like a housekeeper’s enjoy- 
ment in pickling and preserving, or a 
washerwoman’s enjoyment of a heavy 
wash, or a dustman’s enjoyment of an 
overflowing dust-bin, or any other pro- 
fessional enjoyment of a mess in the 
way of business. 

“ I still look round, from time to time, 
sir,” said Mr. Rugg, cheerfully, “ to see 
whether any lingering Detainers are ac- 
cumulating at the gate. They have 
fallen in pretty thick, sir; as thick as 
we could have expected.” 

He remarked upon the circumstance 
as if it were matter of congratulation : 
rubbing his hands briskly, and rolling 
his head a little. 

“As thick,” repeated Mr. Rugg, “as 
we could reasonably have expected. 
Quite a shower-bath of ’em. I don’t 
often intrude upon you, now, when I 
look round, because I know you are not 
inclined for company, and that if you 
wished to see me, you would leave word 
in the lodge. But I am here pretty 
well every day, sir. Would this be an 
unseasonable time, sir,” asked Mr. 
Rugg, coaxingly, “for me to offer an 
observation ? ” 

“ As seasonable a time as any oth- 
er.” 

“ Hum ! Public opinion, sir,” said 
Mr. Rugg, “ has been busy with you.” 

“ I don’t doubt it.” 

“ Might it not be advisable, sir,” said 
Mr. Rugg, more coaxingly yet, “ now 
to make, at last and after all, a trifling 
concession to public opinion ? We all 
do it in one way or another. The fact 
is, we must do it.” 

“ I cannot set myself right with it, 
Mr. Rugg, and have no business to ex- 
pect that I ever shall.” 

“ Don’t say that, sir, don’t say that. 
The cost of being moved to the Bench 
is almost insignificant, and if the general 


feeling is strong that you ought to be 
there, why — really — ” 

“ I thought you had settled, Mr. 
Rugg,” said Arthur, “that my deter- 
mination to remain here was a matter of 
taste.” 

“ Well, sir, well ! But is it good 
taste, is it good taste ? That ’s the ques- 
tion.” Mr. Rugg was so soothingly 
persuasive as to be quite pathetic. “ I 
was almost going to say, is it good feel- 
ing? This is an extensive affair of 
yours ; and your remaining here, where 
a man can come for a pound or two, is 
remarked upon as not in keeping. It 
is not in keeping. I can’t tell you, sir, 
in how many quarters I hear it men- 
tioned. I heard comments made upon 
it last night, in a Parlor frequented by 
what I should call, if I did not look in 
there now and then myself, the best 
legal company, — I heard, there, com- 
ments on it that I was sorry to hear. 
They hurt me, on your account. Again, 
only this morning at breakfast. My 
daughter (but a woman, you ’ll say ; yet 
still with a feeling for these things, and 
even with some little personal experi- 
ence, as the plaintiff in Rugg and Baw- 
kins) was expressing her great surprise, 
— her great surprise. Now under these 
circumstances, and considering that none 
of us can quite set ourselves above pub- 
lic opinion, wouldn’t a trifling conces- 
sion to that opinion be — Come, sir ! ” 
said Rugg, “ I will put it on the lowest 
ground of argument, and say, Amia- 
ble?” 

Arthur’s thoughts had once more 
wandered away to Little Dorrit, and 
the question remained unanswered. 

“As to myself, sir,” said Mr. Rugg, 
hoping that his eloquence had reduced 
him to a state of indecision, “ it is a 
principle of mine not to consider myself 
when a client’s inclinations are in the 
scale. But, knowing your considerate 
character and general w r ish to oblige, I 
will repeat that I should prefer your 
being in the Bench. Your case has 
made a noise ; it is a creditable case to 
be professionally concerned in ; I should 
feel on a better standing with my con- 
nection if you went to the Bench. 
Don’t let that influence you, sir. I 
merely state the fact.” 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


43i 


So errant had the prisoner’s attention 
already grown in solitude and dejection, 
and so accustomed had it become to 
commune with only one silent figure 
within the ever-frowning walls, that 
Clennam had to shake off a kind of 
stupor before he could look at Mr. 
Rugg, recall the thread of his talk, and 
hurriedly say, “ I am unchanged, and 
unchangeable, in my decision. Pray, 
let it be ; let it be ! ” Mr. Rugg, with- 
out concealing that he was nettled and 
mortified, replied, — 

“ O, beyond a doubt, sir ! I have 
travelled out of the record, sir, 1 am 
aware, in putting the point to you. 
But really, when I hear it remarked 
in several companies and in very good 
company, that however worthy of a 
foreigner, it is not worthy of the spirit of 
an Englishman to remain in the Mar- 
shalsea when the glorious liberties of 
his island home admit of his removal 
to the Bench, I thought I would depart 
from the narrow professional line marked 
out to me, and mention it. Personal- 
ly,” said Mr. Rugg, “I have no opinion 
on the topic.” 

“ .That ’s well,” returned Arthur. 

“ O, none at all, sir!” said Mr. 
Rugg. “ If I had, I should have been 
unwilling, some minutes ago, to see a 
client of mine visited in this place by a 
gentleman of high family riding a sad- 
dle-horse. But it was not my business. 
If I had, I might have wished to be 
now empowered to mention to another 
gentleman, a gentleman of military ex- 
terior at present waiting in the lodge, 
that my client had never intended to 
remain here, and was on the eve of 
removal to a superior abode. But my 
course as a professional machine is 
clear ; I have nothing to do with it. Is 
it your good pleasure to see the gentle- 
man, sir ? ” 

“ Who is waiting to see me, did you 
say? ” 

“ I did take that unprofessional liber- 
ty, sir. . Hearing that I was your pro- 
fessional adviser, he declined to inter- 
pose before my very limited function 
was performed. Happily,” said Mr. 
Rugg, with sarcasm, “ I did not so far 
travel out of the record as to ask the 
gentleman for his name.” 


“ I suppose I have no resource but to 
see him,” sighed Clennam, wearily. 

“ Then it is your good pleasure, sir ? ” 
retorted Rugg. “ Am I honored by 
your instructions to mention as much to 
the gentleman as I pass out? I am ? 
Thank you, sir. I take my leave.” 
His leave he took accordingly, in dud- 
geon. 

The gentleman of military exterior 
had so imperfectly awakened Clennam’s 
curiosity, in the existing state of his 
mind, that a half-forgetfulness of such 
a visitor’s having been referred to was 
already creeping over it as a part of 
the sombre veil which almost always 
dimmed it now, when a heavy footstep 
on the stairs aroused him. It appeared 
to ascend them, not very promptly or 
spontaneously, yet with a display of 
stride and clatter meant to be insulting. 
As it paused for a moment on the land- 
ing outside his door, he could not recall 
his association with the peculiarity of its 
sound, though he thought he had one. 
Only a moment was given him for con- 
sideration. His door was immediately 
swung open by a thump, and in the 
doorway stood the missing Blandois, 
the cause of many anxieties. 

“ Salve, fellow jail-bird ! ” said he. 
“You want me, it seems. Here I 
am ! ” 

Before Arthur could speak to him in 
his indignant wonder, Cavalletto fol- 
lowed him into the room. Mr. Pancks 
followed Cavalletto. _ Neither of the 
two had been there since its present oc- 
cupant had had possession of it. Mr. 
Pancks, breathing hard, sidled near the 
window, put his hat on the ground, 
stirred his hair up with both hands, and 
folded his arms, like a man who had 
come to a pause in a hard day’s work. 
Mr. Baptist, never taking his eyes from 
his dreaded chum of old, softly sat down 
on the floor with his back against the 
door and one of his ankles in each 
hand, — resuming the attitude (except 
that it was now expressive of unwink- 
ing watchfulness) in which he had sat 
before the same man in the deeper 
shade of another prison, one hot morn- 
ing at Marseilles. 

“ I have it on the witnessing of these 
two madmen,” said Monsieur Blandois, 


432 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


otherwise Lagnier, otherwise Rigaud, 
“ that you want me, brother-bird. Here 
I am ! ” 

Glancing round contemptuously at 
the bedstead, which was turned up by 
day, he leaned his back against it as a 
resting-place, without removing his hat 
from his head, and stood defiantly 
lounging with his hands in his pock- 
ets. 

“You villain of ill omen ! ” said Ar- 
thur. “You have purposely cast a 
dreadful suspicion upon my mother’s 
house. Why have you done it ? What 
prompted you to the devilish inven- 
tion ? ” 

Monsieur Rigaud, after frowning at 
him for a moment, laughed. “ Hear 
this noble gentleman ! Listen, all the 
world, to this creature of Virtue ! But 
take care, take care. It is possible, 
my friend, that your ardor is a little 
compromising. Holy blue ! It is pos- 
sible.” 

“ Signore ! ” interposed Cavalletto, 
also addressing Arthur ; “ for, to com- 
mence, hear me ! I received your in- 
structions to find him, Rigaud ; is it 
not?” 

“It is the truth.” 

“I go, consequentementally,” it 
would have given Mrs. Plomish great 
concern if she could have been persuad- 
ed that his occasional lengthening of an 
adverb in this way was the chief fault 
of his English, “ first among my coun- 
trymen. I ask them what news in Lon- 
dra, of foreigners arrived. Then I go 
among the French. Then I go among 
the Germans. They all tell me. The 
great part of us know well the other, 
and they all tell me. But ! — no person 
can tell me nothing of him, Rigaud. 
Fifteen times,” said Cavalletto, thrice 
throwing out his left hand with all its 
fingers spread, and doing it so rapidly 
that the sense of sight could hardly fol- 
low the action, “ I ask of him in every 
place where go the foreigners ; and fif- 
teen times,” repeating the same swift 
performance, “ they know nothing. 
But ! — ” 

At his significant Italian rest on the 
word “but,” his back-handed shake 
of his right forefinger came into play ; a 
very little, and very cautiously. 


“But! — After a long time, when I 
have not been able to find that he is 
here in Londra, some one tells me of a 
soldier with white hair — hey ? — not 
hair like this that he carries — white — 
who lives retired secrettementally, in 
a certain place. But ! ” — with another 
rest upon the word, “ who sometimes, in 
the after-dinner, walks, and smokes. It 
is necessary, as they say in Italy (and 
as they know, poor people), to have 
patience. I have patience. I ask where 
is this certain place. One believes it is 
here, one believes it is there. Eh, well ! 
It is not here, it is not there. I wait, 
patientissamentally. At last I find it. 
Then I watch; then I hide, until he 
walks and smokes. He is a soldier 
with gray hair — But! — ” a very de- 
cided rest indeed, and a very vigorous 
play from side to side of the back-hand- 
ed forefinger — “he is also this man 
that you see.” 

It was noticeable, that, in his old 
habit of submission to one who had been 
at the trouble of asserting superiority 
over him, he even then bestowed upon 
Rigaud a confused bend of his head, 
after thus pointing him out. 

“ Eh, well, Signore ! ” he cried in con- 
clusion, addressing Arthur again. “ I 
waited for a good opportunity. I writed 
some words to Signor Panco,” an air of 
novelty came over Mr. Pancks with this 
designation, “to come and help. I 
showed him, Rigaud, at his window to 
Signor Panco, who was often the spy 
in the day. I slept at night near the 
door of the house. At last we entered, 
only this to-day, and now you see him ! 
As he would not come up in presence 
of the illustrious Advocate,” such was 
Mr. Baptist’s honorable mention of Mr. 
Rugg, “ we waited down below there, 
together, and Signor Panco guarded 
the street.” 

At the close of this recital, Arthur 
turned his eyes upon the impudent and 
wicked face. As it met his, the nose 
came down over the mustache, and the 
mustache went up under the nose. 
When nose and mustache had settled 
into their places again. Monsieur Ri- 
gaud loudly snapped his fingers half a 
dozen times ; bending forward to jerk 
the snaps at Arthur, as if they were 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


433 


palpable missiles which he jerked into 
his face. 

“ Now, Philosopher ! ” said Rigaud. 
“ What do you want with me? ” 

“ I want to know,” returned Arthur, 
without disguising his abhorrence, “ how 
you dare direct a suspicion of murder 
against my mother’s house ? ” 

“ Dare ! ” cried Rigaud. “ Ho, ho ! 
Hear him ! Dare ? Is it dare ? By 
Heaven, my small boy, but you are a 
little imprudent ! ” 

“ I want that suspicion to be cleared 
away,” said Arthur. “ You shall be 
taken there, and be publicly seen. I 
want to know, moreover, what business 
you had there, when I had a burning 
desire to fling you down stairs. Don’t 
frown at me, man ! I have seen enough 
of you to know that you are a bully and 
coward. I need no revival, of my spirits 
from the effects of this wretched place 
to tell you so plain a fact, and one that 
you know so well.” 

White to the lips, Rigaud stroked his 
mustache, muttering, “ By Heaven, my 
small boy, but you are a little compro- 
mising of my lady your respectable 
mother,” — and seemed for a minute 
undecided how to act. His indecision 
was soon gone. He sat himself down 
with a threatening swagger, and said, — 

“ Give me a bottle of wine. You can 
buy wine here. Send one of your mad- 
men to get me a bottle of wine. I won’t 
talk to you without wine. Come ! Yes 
or no?” 

“ Fetch him what he wants, Caval- 
letto,” said Arthur, scornfully, produ- 
cing the money. 

“ Contraband beast,” added Rigaud, 
“ bring Port wine ! I ’ll drink nothing 
but Porto-Porto.” 

The contraband beast, however, as- 
suring all present, with his significant 
finger, that he peremptorily declined to 
leave his post at the door, Signor Pan- 
co offered his services. He soon re- 
turned with the bottle of wine, which, 
according to the custom of the place, 
originating in a scarcity of corkscrews 
among the collegians (in common with 
a scarcity of much else), was already 
opened for use. 

“ Madman ! A large glass,” said 
Rigaud. 


Signor Panco put a tumbler before 
him ; not without a visible conflict of 
feeling on the question of throwing it 
at his head. 

“ Haha ! ” boasted Rigaud. “ Once 
a gentleman, and always a gentleman. 
A gentleman from the beginning, and 
a gentleman to the end. What the 
devil ! A gentleman must be waited 
on, I hope ? It ’s a part of my character 
to be waited on ! ” 

He half filled the tumbler as he said 
it, and drank off the contents when he 
had done saying it. 

“ Hah ! ” smacking his lips. “ Not 
a very old prisoner that ! I judge by 
your looks, brave sir, that imprisonment 
will subdue your blood much sooner 
than it softens this hot wine. You are 
mellowing, — losing body and color, 
already. I salute you ! ” 

He tossed off another half-glass : 
holding it up both before and afterwards, 
so as to display his small white hand. 

“To business,” he then continued. 
“To conversation. You have shown 
yourself more free of speech than body, 
sir.” 

“ I have used the freedom of telling 
you what you know yourself to be. 
You know yourself, as we all know you, 
to be far worse than that.” 

“Add, always, a gentleman, and it’s 
no matter. Except in that regard, we 
are all alike. For example : you could 
n’t for your life be a gentleman : I could 
n’t for my life be otherwise. How great 
the difference ! Let us go on. Words, 
sir, never influence the course of the 
cards, or the course of the dice. Do you 
know that? You do? I also play a game, 
and words are without power over it.” 

Now that he was confronted with Ca- 
valletto, and knew that his story was 
known, whatever thin disguise he had 
worn he dropped ; and faced it out, with 
a bare face, astlie infamous wretch he was. 

“ No, my son,” he resumed, with a 
snap of his fingers. “ I play my game 
to the end in spite of words ; and Death 
of my Body and Death of my Soul ! 
I ’ll win it. * You want to know why I 
played this little trick that you have 
interrupted? Know then that I had, 
and that I have — do you understand 
me ? have — a commodity to sell to my 


23 


434 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


lady your respectable mother. I de- 
scribed my precious commodity, and 
fixed my price. Touching the bargain, 
your admirable mother was a little too 
calm, too stolid, too immovable and 
statue-like. In fine, your admirable 
mother vexed me. To make variety in 
my position, and to amuse myself — 
what ! a gentleman must be amused at 
somebody’s expense ! — I conceived the 
happy idea of disappearing. An idea, 
see you, that your characteristic mother 
and my Flintwinch would have been 
well enough pleased to execute. Ah ! 
Bah, bah, bah, don’t look as from high 
to low at me ! I rep^it it. Well 
enough pleased, excessively enchanted, 
with all their hearts ravished. How 
strongly will you have it?” 

He threw out the lees of his glass on 
the ground, so that they nearly spattered 
Cavalletto. This seemed to draw his 
attention to him anew. He set down 
his glass and said, — 

“ I ’ll not fill it. What ! I am born 
to be served. Come then, you Caval- 
letto, and fill ! ” 

The little man looked at Clennam, 
whose eyes were occupied with Rigaud, 
and, seeing no prohibition, got up from 
the ground, and poured out from the 
bottle into the glass. The blending, as 
he did so, of his old submission with 
a sense of something humorous ; the 
striving of that with a certain smoul- 
dering ferocity, which might have flashed 
fire in an instant (as the born gentleman 
seemed to think, for he had a wary eye 
upon him) ; and the easy yielding of 
all to a good-natured, careless, predom- 
inant propensity to sit down on the 
ground again ; formed a very remarka- 
ble combination of character. 

“This happy idea, brave sir,” Ri- 
gaud resumed after drinking, “ was a 
happy idea for several reasons. It 
amused me, it worried your dear mamma 
and my Flintwinch, it caused you ago- 
nies (my terms for a lesson in politeness 
towards a gentleman), and it suggested 
to all the amiable persons interested 
that your entirely devoted is a man to 
fear. By Heaven, he is a man to fear ! 
Beyond this ; it might have restored 
her wit to my lady your mother, — 
might, under the pressing little suspi- 


cion your wisdom has recognized, have 
persuaded her at last to announce, cov- 
ertly, in the journals that the difficulties 
of a certain contract would be removed 
by the appearance of a certain important 
party to it. Perhaps yes, perhaps no. 
But that you have interrupted. Now, 
what is it you say? What is it you want?” 

Never had Clennam felt more acutely 
that he was a prisoner in bonds than 
when he saw this man before him, and 
could not accompany him to his moth- 
er’s house. All the undiscernible diffi- 
culties and dangers he had ever feared 
were closing in when he could not stir 
hand or foot. 

“ Perhaps, my friend, philosopher, 
man of virtue, Imbecile, what you will, 
— perhaps,” said Rigaud, pausing in his 
drink to look out of his glass wfith his 
horrible smile, “ you would have done 
better to leave me alone ? ” 

“ No ! At least,” said Clennam, 
“ you are known to be alive and un- 
harmed. At least you cannot escape 
from these two witnesses ; and they 
can produce you before any public au- 
thorities, or before hundreds of people.” 

“ But will not produce me before 
one,” said Rigaud, snapping his fingers 
again w'ith an air of triumphant menace. 
“ To the Devil with your witnesses ! 
To the Devil with your produced ! To 
the Devil with yourself ! What ? Do I 
know what I know, for that ? Have I 
my commodity on sale, for that ? Bah, 
poor debtor ! You have interrupted my 
little project. Let it pass. How then ? 
What remains? To you, nothing; to 
me, all. Produce me ? Is that what 
you want ? I will produce myself only 
too quickly. Contrabandist ! Give me 
pen, ink, and paper.” 

Cavalletto got up again as before, and 
laid them before him in his former man- 
ner. Rigaud, after some villanous 
thinking and smiling, wrote and read 
aloud as follows : — 

“To Mrs. Clennam. 

“Wait answer. 

“ Prison of the Marshalsea, 

At the apartment of your son. 

“ Dear Madam : I am in despair 
to be informed to-day by our prisoner 
here (who has had the goodness to era- 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


435 


ploy spies to seek me, living for politic 
reasons in retirement), that you have 
had fears for my safety. 

“ Reassure yourself, dear madam. 
I am well, I am strong and constant. 

“ With the greatest impatience I 
should fly to your house, but that I 
foresee it to be possible, under the cir- 
cumstances, that you will not yet have 
quite definitively arranged the little 
proposition I have had the honor to 
submit to you. I name one week from 
this day for a last final visit on my 
part ; when you will unconditionally ac- 
cept it or reject it, with its train of con- 
sequences. 

“ I suppress my ardor to embrace you 
and achieve this interesting business, 
in order that you may have leisure to 
adjust its details to our perfect mutual 
satisfaction. 

“ In the mean while, it is not too 
much to propose (our prisoner having 
deranged my housekeeping), that my 
expenses of lodging and nourishment 
at an hotel shall be paid by you. 

“ Receive, dear madam, the assur- 
ance of my highest and most distin- 
guished consideration. 

“ Rigaud Blandois. 

“ A thousand friendships to that dear 
Flint winch. 

“ I kiss the hands of Madame F.” 

When he had finished this epistle, 
Rigaud folded it and tossed it with 
a flourish at Clennam’s feet. “ Hola 
you ! Apropos of producing, let some- 
body produce that at its address, and 
produce the answer here.” 

“ Cavalletto,” said Arthur. “Will 
you take this fellow’s letter ? ” 

But Cavalletto’s significant finger 
again expressing that his post was at 
the door to keep watch over Rigaud, 
now he had found him with so much 
trouble, and that the duty of his post 
was to sit on the floor backed up by the 
door, looking at Rigaud and holding 
his own ankles. Signor Panco once 
more volunteered. His services being 
accepted, Cavalletto suffered the door 
to open barely wide enough to admit of 
his squeezing himself out, and imme- 
diately shut it on him. 


“ Touch me with a finger, touch me 
with an epithet, question my superior- 
ity as L sit here drinking my wine at my 
pleasure,” said Rigaud, “and I follow 
the letter and cancel my week’s grace. 
You wanted me? You have got me ! 
How do you like me ? ” 

“You know,” returned Clennam, 
with a bitter sense of his helplessness, 
“ that when I sought you, I was not a 
prisoner.” 

“To the Devil with you and your 
prison,” retorted Rigaud, leisurely, as 
he took from his pocket a case contain- 
ing the materials for making cigarettes, 
and employed his facile hands in fold- 
ing a few for present use ; “ I care for 
neither of you. Contrabandist ! A 
light.” 

Again Cavalletto got up, and gave 
him what he wanted. There had been 
something dreadful in the noiseless skill 
of his cold, white hands, with the fin- 
gers lithely twisting about and twining 
one over another like serpents. Clen- 
nam could not prevent himself from 
shuddering inwardly, as if he had been 
looking on at a nest of those crea- 
tures. 

“ Hola, Pig ! ” cried Rigaud, with a 
noisy, stimulating cry, as if Cavalletto 
were an Italian horse or mule. “ What ! 
The infernal old jail was a respectable 
one to this. There was dignity in the 
bars and stones of that place. It was 
a prison for men. But this? Bah ! A 
hospital for imbeciles ! ” 

He smoked his cigarette out, with his 
ugly smile so fixed upon his face, that he 
looked as though he were smoking with 
his drooping beak of a nose, rather than 
his mouth ; like a fancy in a weird pic- 
ture. When he had lighted a second 
cigarette at the still-burning end of the 
first, he said to Clennam, — _ 

“ One must pass the time in the mad- 
man’s absence. One must talk. One 
can’t drink strong wine all day long, 
or I would have another bottle. She ’s 
handsome, sir. Though not exactly to 
my taste, still, by the Thunder and the 
Lightning ! handsome. I felicitate you 
on your admiration.” 

“ I neither know nor ask,” said Clen- 
nam, “ of whom you speak.” 

“ Della bella Gowana, sir, as they say 


436 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


in Italy. Of the Gowan, the fair Gow- 
an.” 

“ Of whose husband you were the — 
follower, I think ? ” 

“ Sir ? Follower ? You are insolent. 
The friend.” 

“ Do you sell all your friends? ” 

Rigaud took his cigarette from his 
mouth, and eyed him with a momentary 
revelation of surprise. But he put it 
between his lips again, as he answered 
with coolness, — 

“ I sell anything that commands a 
price. How do your lawyers live, 
your politicians, your intriguers, your 
men of the Exchange? How do you 
live ? How do you come here ? Have 
you sold no friend? Lady of mine ! I 
rather think, yes ! ” 

Clennam turned away from him to- 
wards the window, and sat looking out 
at the wall. 

“ Effectively, sir,” said Rigaud, “ So- 
ciety sells itself and sells me ; and I sell 
Society. I perceive you have acquaint- 
ance with another lady. Also hand- 
some. A strong spirit. Let us see. 
How do they call her? Wade.” 

He received no answer, but could ea- 
sily discern that he had hit the mark. 

“Yes!” he went on, “that hand- 
some lady and strong spirit addresses 
me in the street, and I am not insen- 
sible. I respond. That handsome la- 
dy and strong spirit does me the fa- 
vor to remark, in full confidence, ‘ I 
have my curiosity, and I have my cha- 
grins. You are not more than ordi- 
narily honorable, perhaps?’ I an- 
nounce myself, ‘ Madam, a gentleman 
from the birth, and a gentleman to the 
death ; but not more than ordinarily 
honorable. I despise such a weak 
fantasy.’ Thereupon she is pleased to 
compliment. ‘ The difference between 
you and the rest is,’ she answers, ‘ that 
you say so.’ For she knows society. I 
accept her congratulations with gallan- 
try and politeness. Politeness and little 
gallantries are inseparable from my 
character. She then makes a proposi- 
tion, which is, in effect, that she has 
seen us much together ; that it appears 
to her that I am for the passing time 
the cat of the house, the friend of the 
family ; that her curiosity and her cha- 


grins awaken the fancy to be acquaint- 
ed with their movements, to know the 
manner of their life, how the fair Gow- 
ana is beloved, how the fair Gowana is 
cherished, and so on. She is not rich, 
but offers such and such little recom- 
penses for the little cares and de- 
rangements of such services ; and I 
graciously — to do everything gracious- 
ly is a part of my character — consent 
to accept them. O yes ! So goes the 
world. It is the mode.” 

Though Clennam’s back was turned 
while he spoke, and thenceforth to the 
end of the interview, he kept those 
glittering eyes of his that were too 
near together upon him, and evidently 
saw in the very carriage of the head, 
as he passed, with his braggart reck- 
lessness, from clause to clause of what 
he said, that he was saying nothing 
which Clennam did not already know. 

“Whoof! The Fair Gowana !” he 
said, lighting a third cigarette with a 
sound as if his lightest breath could 
blow her away. “ Charming, but im- 
prudent ! For it was not well of the 
fair Gowana to make mysteries of let- 
ters from old lovers, in her bedcham- 
ber on the mountain, that her husband 
might not see them. No, no. That 
was not well. Whoof! The Gowana 
was mistaken there.” 

“ I earnestly hope,” cried Arthur, 
aloud, “ that Pancks may not be long 
gone, for this man’s presence pollutes 
the room.” 

“Ay! But he’ll flourish here, and 
everywhere,” said Rigaud, with an ex- 
ulting look and snap of his fingers. 
“ He always has ; he always will ! ” 
Stretching his body out on the only 
three chairs in the room besides that 
on which Clennam sat, he sang, smit- 
ing himself on the breast as the gal- 
lant personage of the song: — 

“ ‘ Who passes by this road so late? 

Compagnon de la Majolaine ; 

Who passes by this road so late? 

Always gay ! ’ 

Sing the refrain, pig ! You could sing 
it once, in another jail. Sing it ! Or, 
by every Saint who was stoned to death, 
I ’ll be affronted and compromising ; 
and then some people who are not dead 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


437 


yet had better have been stoned along 
with them ! 


* Of all the king’s knights ’t is the flower, 
Compagnon de la Majolaine ; 

Of all the king’s knights ’t is the flower, 


Always gay ! 


Partly in his old habit of submission, 
partly because his not doing it might 
injure his benefactor, and partly because 
he would as soon do it as anything else, 
Cavalletto took up the refrain this 
time. Rigaud laughed, and fell to smok- 
ing with his eyes shut. 

Possibly another quarter of an hour 
elapsed before Mr. Pancks’s step was 
heard upon the stairs, but the interval 
seemed to Clennam insupportably long. 
His step was attended by another step ; 
and when Cavalletto opened the door, 
he admitted Mr. Pancks and Mr. Flint- 
winch. The latter was no sooner visi- 
ble than Rigaud rushed at him and 
embraced him boisterously. 

“How do you find yourself, sir?” 
said Mr. Flintwinch, as soon as he 
could disengage himself, which he 
struggled to do with very little cere- 
mony. “ Thank you, no ; I don’t want 
any more.” This was in reference to 
another menace of affection from his 
recovered friend. “ Well, Arthur. You 
remember what I said to you about 
sleeping dogs and missing ones. It’s 
come true, you see.” 

He was as imperturbable as ever, to 
all appearance, and nodded his head in 
a moralizing way as he looked round the 
room. 

“ And this is the Marsh alsea prison 
for debt!” said Mr. Flintwinch. “Hah! 
You have brought your pigs to a very 
indifferent market, Arthur.” 

If Arthur had patience, Rigaud had 
not. He took his little Flintwinch, 
with fierce playfulness, by the two lap- 
pels of his coat, and cried, — 

“ To the Devil with the Market, to 
the Devil with the Pigs, and to the 
Devil with the Pig-Driver ! Now ! 
Give me the answer to my letter.” 

“ If you can make it convenient to 
let go a moment, sir,” returned Mr. 
Flintwinch, “ I ’ll first hand Mr. Arthur 
a little note that I have for him.” 

He did so. It was in his mother’s 


maimed writing, on a slip of paper, and 
contained only these words. 

“ I hope it is enough that you have 
ruined yourself. Rest contented with- 
out more ruin. Jeremiah Flintwinch is 
my messenger and representative. Your 
affectionate M. C.” 

Clennam read this twice, in silence, 
and then tore it to pieces. Rigaud in 
the mean while stepped into a chair, and 
sat himself on the back, with his feet 
upon the seat. 

“ Now, Beau Flintwinch,” he said, 
when he had closely watched the note 
to its destruction, “ the answer to my 
letter?” 

“ Mrs. Clennam did not write it, Mr. 
Blandois, her hands being cramped, 
and she thinking it as well to send 
it verbally by me.” Mr. Flintwinch 
screwed this out of himself, unwillingly 
and rustily. “ She sends her compli- 
ments, and says she doesn’t on the 
whole wish to term you unreasonable, 
and that she agrees. But without prej- 
udicing the appointment that stands 
for this day week.” 

Monsieur Rigaud, after indulging in 
a fit of laughter, descended from his 
throne, saying, “ Good ! I go to seek 
an hotel ! ” But there his eyes en- 
countered Cavalletto, who was still at 
his post. 

“ Come, Pig,” he added. “ I have 
had you for a follower against my will ; 
now I ’ll have you against yours. I 
tell you, my little reptiles, I am born to 
be served. I demand the service of 
this contrabandist as my domestic until 
this day week.” 

In answer to Cavalletto’s look of in- 
quiry, Clennam made him a sign to go ; 
but he added aloud, “Unless you are 
afraid of him.” Cavalletto replied with 
a very emphatic finger-negative. “ No, 
master, I am not afraid of him, when I 
no more keep it secrettementally that 
he was once my comrade.” Rigaud 
took no notice of either remark, until 
he had lighted his last cigarette and 
was quite ready for walking. 

“ Afraid of him,” he said then, look- 
ing round upon them all. “Whoof! 
My children, my babies, my little dolls, 
you are all afraid of him. You give 
him his bottle of wine here ; you give 


438 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


him meat, drink, and lodging there ; 
you dare not touch him with a finger or 
an epithet. No. It is his character to 
triumph! Whoof! 

‘ Of all the king’s knights he ’s the flower, 
And he ’s always gay ! * ” 

With this adaptation of the refrain to 
himself, he stalked out of the room, 
closely followed by Cavalletto, whom 
perhaps he had pressed into his service 
because he tolerably well knew it would 
not be easy to get rid of him. Mr. 
Flintwinch, after scraping his chin and 
looking about with caustic disparage- 
ment of the Pig-Market, nodded to Ar- 
thur, and followed. Mr. Pancks, still 
penitent and depressed, followed too ; 
after receiving with great attention a 
secret word or two of instructions from 
Arthur, and whispering back that he 
would see this affair out, and stand by 
it to the end. The prisoner, with the 
feeling that he was more despised, more 
scorned and repudiated, more helpless, 
altogether more miserable and fallen, 
than before, was left alone again. 


CHAPTER XXIX. 

A PLEA IN THE MARSHALSEA. 

Haggard anxiety and remorse are 
bad companions to be barred up with. 
Brooding all day, and resting very little 
indeed at night, will not arm a man 
against misery. Next morning, < Clen- 
nam felt that his health was sinking, as 
his spirits had already sunk, and that 
the weight under which he bent was 
bearing him down. 

Night after night he had arisen from 
his bed of wretchedness at twelve or 
one o’clock, and had sat at his window 
watching the sickly lamps in the yard, 
and looking upward for the first wan 
trace of day, hours before it was possi- 
ble that the sky could show it to him. 
Now, when the night came, he could 
not even persuade himself to undress. 

For a burning restlessness set in, 
an agonized impatience of the prison, 
and a conviction that he was going to 
break his heart and die there, which 


caused him indescribable suffering. 
His dread and hatred of the place be- 
came so intense that he felt it a labor to 
draw his breath in it. The sensation 
of being stifled sometimes so overpow- 
ered him, that he would stand at the 
window holding his throat and gasping. 
At the same time a longing for other 
air, and a yearning to be beyond the 
blind blank wall, made him feel as if 
he must go mad with the ardor of the 
desire. 

Many other prisoners had had expe- 
rience of this condition before him, and 
its violence and continuity had worn 
themselves out in their cases, as they 
did in his. Two nights and a day ex- 
hausted it. It came back by fits, but 
those grew fainter and returned at 
lengthening intervals. A desolate calm 
succeeded ; and the middle of the week 
found him settled down in the despond- 
ency of low, slow fever. 

With Cavalletto and Pancks away, 
he had no visitors to fear but Mr. and 
Mrs. Plomish. His anxiety, in refer- 
ence to that worthy pair, was that they 
should not come near him ; for, in the 
morbid state of his nerves, he sought 
to be left alone and spared the being 
seen so subdued and weak. He wrote 
a note to Mrs. Plornish, representing 
himself as occupied with his affairs, 
and bound, by the necessity of devoting 
himself to them, to remain for a time 
even without the pleasant interruption 
of a sight of her kind face. As to 
Young John, who looked in daily at a 
certain hour, when the turnkeys were 
relieved, to ask if he could do anything 
for him, he always made a pretence of 
being engaged in writing, and to an- 
swer cheerfully in the negative. The 
subject of their only long conversation 
had never been revived between them. 
Through all these changes of unhappi- 
ness, however, it had never lost its hold 
on Clennam’s mind. 

The sixth day of the appointed week 
was a moist, hot, misty day. It seemed 
as though the prison’s poverty and 
shabbiness and dirt were growing in 
the sultry atmosphere. With an aching 
head and a weary heart, Clennam had 
watched the miserable night out, listen- 
ing to the fall of rain on the yard pave- 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


439 


ment, thinking of its softer fall upon the 
country earth. A blurred circle of yel- 
low haze had risen up in the sky in lieu 
of sun, and he had watched the patch 
it put upon his wall, like a bit of the 
prison’s raggedness. He had heard 
the gates open ; and the badly shod feet 
that waited outside shuffle in ; and the 
sweeping, and pumping, and moving 
about begin, which commenced the 
prison morning. So ill and faint, that 
he was obliged to rest many times in 
the process of getting himself washed, 
he had at length crept to his chair by 
the open window. In it he sat dozing, 
while the old woman who arranged his 
room went through her morning’s work. 

Light of head with want of sleep and 
want of food (his appetite, and even 
his sense of taste, having forsaken him), 
he had been two or three times con- 
scious, in the night, of going astray. 
He had heard fragments of tunes and 
songs, in the warm wind, which he 
knew had no existence. Nov/ that he 
began to doze in exhaustion, he heard 
therff again ; and voices seemed to ad- 
dress him, and he answered, and started. 

Dozing and dreaming, without the 
power of reckoning time, so that a min- 
ute might have been an hour and an 
hour a minute, some abiding impression 
of a garden stole over him, — a garden 
of flowers, with a damp warm wind 
gently stirring their scents. It required 
such a painful effort to lift his head for 
the purpose of inquiring into this, or in- 
quiring into anything, that the impres- 
sion appeared to have become quite an 
old and importunate one when he looked 
round. Beside the teacup on his table 
he saw, then, a blooming nosegay, — a 
wonderful handful of the choicest and 
most lovely flowers. 

Nothing had ever appeared so beauti- 
ful in his sight. He took them up and 
inhaled their fragrance, and he lifted 
them to his hot head, and he put them 
down and opened his parched hands to 
them, as cold hands are opened to re- 
ceive the cheering of a fire. It was not 
until he had delighted in them for some 
time, that he wondered w’ho had sent 
them ; and opened his door to ask the 
woman who must have put them there 
how they had come into her hands. 


But she was gone, and seemed to have 
been long gone ; for the tea she had 
left for him on the table was cold. He 
tried to drink some, but could not bear 
the odor of it ; so he crept back to his 
chair by the open window, and put the 
flow'ers on the little round table of old. 

When the first faintness consequent 
on having moved about had left him, he 
subsided into his former state. One of 
the night-tunes w’as playing in the wind, 
w'hen the door of his room seemedtoopen 
to a light touch, and, after a moment’s 
pause, a quiet figure seemed to stand 
there, with a black mantle on it. It 
seemed to draw’ the mantle off and drop 
it on the ground, and then it seemed to 
be his Little Dorrit in her old, worn 
dress. It seemed to tremble, and to 
clasp its hands, and to smile, and to 
burst into tears. 

He roused himself, and cried out. 
And then he saw’, in the loving, pitying, 
sorrowing, dear face, as in a mirror, 
how changed he was ; and she came to- 
wards him ; and with her hands laid on 
his breast to keep him in his chair, and 
with her knees upon the floor at his 
feet, and with her lips raised up to kiss 
him, and with her tears dropping on 
him as the rain from Heaven had 
dropped upon the flowers, Little Dorrit, 
a living presence, called him by his 
name. 

“ O my best friend ! Dear Mr. Clen- 
nam, don’t let me see you w’eep ! Un- 
less you w’eep with pleasure to see me. 
I hope you do. Your own poor child 
come back ! ” 

So faithful, tender, and unspoiled by 
Fortune. In the sound of her voice, in 
the light of her eyes, in the touch of her 
hands, so angelically comforting and 
true ! . 

As he embraced her, she s^id to him, 
“ They never told me you w r ere ill,” 
and, drawing an arm softly round his 
neck, laid his head upon her bosom, 
put a hand upon his head, and, resting 
her cheek upon that hand, nursed lum 
as lovinglv, and God knows as innocent- 
ly, as she had nursed her father in that 
room when she had been but a baby, 
needing all the care from others that 
she took of them. 

When he could speak, he said, “ Is it 


44 ° 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


possible that you have come to me? 
And in this dress?” 

“ I hoped you would like me better 
in this dress than any other. I have 
always kept it by me, to remind me, — 
though I wanted no reminding. I am 
not alone, you see. I have brought an 
old friend with me.” 

Looking round, he saw Maggy in her 
big cap which had been long aban- 
doned, with a basket on her arm as in 
the bygone days, chuckling rapturously. 

“ It was only yesterday evening that 
I came to London with my brother. I 
sent round to Mrs. Plornish almost as 
soon as we arrived, that I might hear of 
you and let you know I had come. 
Then I heard that you were here. Did 
you happen to think of me in the night? 
I almost believe you must have thought 
of me a little. I thought of you so anx- 
iously, and it appeared so long to morn- 
ing.” 

“ I have thought of you — ” he hesi- 
tated what to call her. She perceived 
it in an instant. 

“ You have not spoken to me by my 
right name yet. You know what my 
right name always is with you.” 

“ I have thought of you, Little Dor- 
rit, every day, every hour, every min- 
ute, since I have been here.” 

“ Have you ? Have you?” 

He saw the bright delight of her face, 
and the flush that kindled in it, with a 
feeling of shame. He, a broken, bank- 
rupt, sick, dishonored prisoner. 

“ I was here before the gates were 
opened, but I was afraid to come 
straight to you. I should have done 
you more harm than good at first; for 
the prison was so familiar and yet so 
strange, and it brought back so many 
remembrances of my poor father, and of 
you too, that at first it overpowered me. 
But we went to Mr. Chivery before we 
came to the gate, and he brought us in, 
and got John’s room for us, — my poor 
old room, you know, — and we waited 
there a little. I brought the flowers to 
the door, but you didn’t hear me.” 

She looked something more womanly 
than when she had gone away, and the 
ripening touch of the Italian sun was 
visible upon her face. But otherwise 
she was quite unchanged. The same 


deep, timid earnestness that he had al- 
ways seen in her, and never without 
emotion, he saw still. If it had a new 
meaning that smote him to the heart, 
the change was in his perception, not 
in her. 

She took off her old bonnet, hung it 
in the old place, and noiselessly began, 
with Maggy’s help, to make his room as 
fresh and neat as it could be made, and 
to sprinkle it with a pleasant-smelling 
water. When that was done, the bas- 
ket, which was filled with grapes and 
other fruit, was unpacked, and all its 
contents were quietly put away. When 
that was done, a moment’s whisper de- 
spatched Maggy to despatch somebody 
else to fill the basket again ; which soon 
came back replenished w'ith new stores, 
from which a present provision of cool- 
ing drink and jelly, and a prospective 
supply of roast chicken and wane and 
water, were the first extracts. These 
various arrangements completed, she 
took out her old needle-case to make 
him a curtain for his window ; and thus, 
with a quiet reigning in the roonwethat 
seemed to diffuse itself through the else 
noisy prison, he found himself composed 
in his chair, with Little Dorrit working 
at his side. 

To see the modest head again bent 
down over its task, and the nimble fin- 
gers busy at their old work, — though 
she was not so absorbed in it but that 
her compassionate eyes were often raised 
to his face, and, when they drooped 
again, had tears in them, — to be so 
consoled and comforted, and to believe 
that all the devotion of this great nature 
was turned to him in his adversity, to 
pour out its inexhaustible wealth of 
goodness upon him, did not steady 
Clennam’s trembling voice or hand, or 
strengthen him in his weakness. Yet 
it inspired him with an inward fortitude 
that rose with his love. And how 
dearly he loved her, now, what words 
can tell ! 

As they sat side by side, in the shad- 
ow of the wall, the shadow fell like light 
upon him. She would not let him 
speak much, and he lay back in his 
chair, looking at her. _ Now and again, 
she w r ould rise and give him the glass 
that he might drink, or would smooth 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


44x 


the resting-pface of his head ; then she 
would gently resume her seat by him, 
and bend over her work again. 

The shadow moved with the sun, but 
she never moved from his side, except 
to wait, upon him. The sun went down 
and she was still there. She had done 
her work now, and her hand, faltering 
on the arm of his chair since its last 
tending of him, was hesitating there 
yet. He laid his hand upon it, and it 
clasped him with a trembling supplica- 
tion. 

“ Dear Mr. Clennam, I must say 
something to you before I go. I have 
put it off from hour to hour, but I must 
say it.” 

“ I too, dear Little Dorrit. I have 
put off what I must say.” 

She nervously moved her hand to- 
wards his lips as if to stop him ; then 
it dropped, trembling, into its former 
place. 

“ I am not going abroad again. My 
brother is, but I am not. He was al- 
ways attached to me, and he is so grate- 
ful to me now, — so much too grateful, 
for it is only because I happened to be 
with him in his illness, — that he says I 
shall be free to stay where I like best, 
and to do what I like best. He only 
wishes me to be happy, he says.” 

There was one bright star shining in 
the sky. She looked up at it while she 
spoke, as if it were the fervent pur- 
pose of her own heart shining above 
her. 

“ You will understand, I dare say, 
without my telling you, that my brother 
has come home to find my dear father’s 
will, and to take possession of his prop- 
erty. He says, if there is a will, he is 
sure I shall be left rich : and if there is 
none, that he will make me so.” 

He would have spoken ; but she put 
up her trembling hand again, and he 
stopped. 

“ I have no use for money, I have no 
wish for it. It would be of no value at 
all to me, but for your sake. I could 
not be rich, and you here. I must al- 
ways be much worse than poor, with 
you distressed. Will you let me lend 
you all I have? Will you let me give 
it 3'ou? Will you let me show you that 
I never have forgotten, that I never can 


forget, your protection of me when this 
was my home ? Dear Mr. Clennam, 
make me of all the world the happiest, 
by saying Yes ! Make me as happy as 
I can be in leaving you here, by saying 
nothing to-night, and letting me go 
away with the hope that you will think 
of it kindly ; and that for my sake — 
not for yours, for mine, for nobody’s but 
mine ! — you will give me the greatest 
joy I can experience on earth, the joy of 
knowing that I have been serviceable 
to you, and that I have paid some little 
of the great debt of my affection and 
gratitude. I can’t say what I wish to 
say. I can’t visit you here where I 
have lived so long, I can’t think of you 
here where I have seen so much, and 
be as calm and comforting as I ought. 
My tears will make their way. I can- 
not keep them back. But pray, pray, 
pi*ay, do not turn from your Little Dor- 
rit, now, in your affliction ! Pray, pray, 
pray, I beg you and implore you with 
all my grieving heart, my friend, — my 
dear ! — take all I have, and make it a 
Blessing to me ! ” 

The star had shone on her face until 
now, when her face sank upon his 
hand and her own. 

It had grown darker when he raised 
her in his encircling arm, and softly an- 
swered her. 

“ No, darling Little Dorrit. No, my 
child. I must not hear of such a sacri- 
fice. Liberty and hope would be so 
dear, bought at such a price, that I 
could never support their weight, never 
bear the reproach of possessing them. 
But with what ardent thankfulness and 
love I say this, I may call Heaven to 
witness ! ” 

“And yet you will not let me be 
faithful to you in your affliction? ” 

“ Say, dearest Little Dorrit, and yet 
I will try to be faithful to you. If, in 
the bygone days when this was your 
home and when this was your dress, I 
had understood myself (I speak only of 
myself) better, and had read the secrets 
of my own breast more distinctly ; if, 
through my reserve and self-mistrust, I 
had discerned a light that I see brightly 
now when it has passed far away, and 
my weak footsteps can never overtake 
it ; if I had then known, and told you 


442 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


that I loved and honored you, not as 
the poor child I used to call you, but 
as a woman whose true hand would 
raise me high above myself, and make 
me a far happier and better man ; if I 
had so used the opportunity there is no 
recalling, — as I wish I had ; O, I wish I 
had ! — and if something had kept us 
apart then, when I was moderately 
thriving, and when you were poor ; I 
might have met your noble offer of your 
fortune, dearest girl, with other words 
than these, and still have blushed to 
touch it. But, as it is, I must never 
touch it, never ! ” 

She besought him, more pathetically 
and earnestly, with her little supplicato- 
ry hand, than she could have done in 
any words. 

“ I am disgraced enough, my Little 
Dorrit. I must not descend so low as 
that, and carry you — so dear, so gen- 
erous, so good — down with me. God 
bless you, God reward you ! It is 
past.” 

He took her in his arms, as if she 
had been his daughter. 

“ Always so much older, so much 
rougher, and so much less worthy, even 
what I was must be dismissed by both 
of us, and you must see me only as I 
am. I put this parting kiss upon your 
cheelt, my child, — who might have 
been more near to me, who never could 
have been more dear, — a ruined man 
far removed from you, forever separated 
from you, whose course is run, while 
yours is but beginning. I have not the 
courage to ask to be forgotten by you 
in my humiliation ; but I ask to be re- 
membered only as I am.” 

The bell began to ring, warning vis- 
itors to depart. He took her mantle 
from the wall, and tenderly wrapped it 
round her. 

“ One other word, my Little Dorrit. 
A hard one to me, but it is a necessary 
one. The time when you and this 
prison had anything in common has 
long gone by. Do you understand?” 

“O, you will never say to me,” she 
cried, weeping bitterly, and holding up 
her clasped hands in entreaty, “ that I 
am not to come back any more ! You 
will surely not desert me so ! ” 

“ I would say it if I could ; but I 


have not the courage quite to shut out 
this dear face, and abandon all hope of 
its return. But do not come soon, do 
not come often ! This is now a tainted 
place, and I well know the* taint of it 
clings to me. You belong to much 
brighter and better scenes. You are 
not to look back here, my Little Dor- 
rit ; you are to look away to very differ- 
ent and much happier paths. Again 
God bless you in them ! God reward 
you ! ” 

Maggy, who had fallen into very low 
spirits, here cried, “ O, get him into a 
hospital ; do get him into a hospital, 
mother ! He ’ll never look like his 
self again 1 , if he ain’t got into a hospital. 
And then the little woman as was al- 
ways a spinning at her wheel, she can 
go to the cupboard with the Princess 
and say, what do you keep the Chick- 
ing there for? and then they can take it 
out and give it to him, and then all be 
happy ! ” 

The interruption was seasonable, for 
the bell had nearly rung itself out. 
Again tenderly wrapping her mantle 
about her, and taking her on his arm 
(though, but for her visit, he was almost 
too weak to walk), Arthur led Little 
Dorrit down stairs. She was the last 
visitor to pass out at the lodge, and 
the gate jarred heavily and hopelessly 
upon her. 

With the funeral clang that it sound- 
ed into Arthur’s heart, his sense of 
weakness returned. It was a toilsome 
journey up stairs to his room, and he 
re-entered its dark solitary precincts in 
unutterable misery. 

When it was almost midnight, and 
the prison had long been quiet, a cau- 
tious creak came up the stairs, and a 
cautious tap of a key was given at his 
door. It was Young John.' He glided 
in, in his stockings, and held the door 
closed, while he spoke in a whisper. 

“It’s against all rules, but I don’t 
mind. I was determined to come 
through, and come to you.” 

“ What is the matter?” 

“Nothing’s the matter, sir. I was 
waiting in the courtyard for Miss Dor- 
rit when she came out. I thought 
you ’d like some one to see that she 
was safe.” 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


443 


“ Thank you, thank you ! You took 
her home, John ? ” 

“ I saw her to her hotel. The same 
that Mr. Dorrit was at. Miss Dorrit 
walked all the way, and talked to me so 
kind, it quite knocked me over. Why 
do you think she walked instead of rid- 
ing ? ” 

“I don’t know, John.” 

“To talk about you. She said to 
me, ‘ John, you was always honorable, 
and if you ’ll promise me that you will 
take care of him, and never let him 
want for help and comfort when I am 
not there, my mind will be at rest so 
far.’ I promised her. And I’ll stand 
by you,” said John Chivery, “forever ! ” 

Clennam, much affected, stretched 
out his hand to this honest spirit. 

“ Before I take it,” said John, look- 
ing at it, without coming from the door, 
“guess what message Miss Dorrit gave 
me.” 

Clennam shook his head. 

“‘Tell him,’” repeated John, in a 
distinct, though quavering voice, “ ‘ that 
his Little Dorrit sent him her undying 
love.’ Now it’s delivered. Have I 
been honorable, sir?” 

“Very, very!” 

“ Will you tell Miss Dorrit I ’ve been 
honorable, sir? ” 

“ I will indeed.” 

“There’s my hand, sir,” said John, 
“and I ’ll stand by you forever ! ” 

After a hearty squeeze, he disap- 
peared with the same cautious creak 
upon the stair, crept shoeless over the 
pavement of the yard, and, locking the 
gates behind him, passed out into the 
front where he had left his shoes. If 
the same way had been paved with 
burning ploughshares, it is not at all 
improbable that John would have trav- 
ersed it with the same devotion, for 
the same purpose. 


CHAPTER XXX. 

CLOSING IN. 

The last day of the appointed week 
touched the bars of the Marshalsea 
gate. Black, all night, since the gate 


had clashed upon Little Dorrit, its 
iron stripes were turned by the early- 
glowing sun into stripes of gold. For 
aslant across the city, over its jumbled 
roofs, and through the open tracery of 
its church-towers, struck the long 
bright rays, bars of the prison of this 
lower world. 

Throughout the day, the old house 
within the gateway remained untrou- 
bled by any visitors. But when the 
sun was low, three men turned in at 
the gateway and made for the dilapi- 
dated house. 

Rigaud was the first, and walked by 
himself, smoking. Mr. Baptist was 
the second, and jogged close after him, 
looking at no other object. Mr. 
Pancks was the third, and carried his 
hat under his arm for the liberation of 
his restive hair, the weather being 
extremely hot. They all came together 
at the doorsteps. 

“You pair of madmen!” said Ri- 
gaud, facing about. “ Don’t go yet ! ” 

“We don’t mean to,” said Mr. 
Pancks. 

Giving him a dark glance in acknowl- 
edgment of his answer, Rigaud knocked 
loudly. He had charged himself with 
drink, for the playing out of his game, 
and was impatient to begin. He had 
hardly finished one long resounding 
knock, when he turned to the knocker 
again and began another. That was 
not yet finished, when Jeremiah Flint- 
winch opened the door, and they all 
clanked into the stone hall. Rigaud, 
thrusting Mr. Flintwinch aside, pro- 
ceeded straight up stairs. His two 
attendants • followed him, Mr. Flint- 
winch followed them, and they all came 
trooping into Mrs. Clennam’s quiet 
room. It was in its usual state ; except 
that one of the windows was wide open, 
and Affery sat on its old-fashioned 
window-seat, mending a stocking. The 
usual articles were on the little table ; 
the usual deadened fire was in the 
grate ; the bed had its usual pall upon 
it ; and the mistress of all sat on her 
black bier-like sofa, propped up by her 
black angular bolster that was like the 
headsman’s block. 

Yet there was a nameless air of prep- 
aration in the room as if it were strung 


444 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


up for an occasion. From what the 
room derived it — every one of its small 
variety of objects being in the fixed 
spot it had occupied for years — no one 
could have said without looking atten- 
tively at its mistress, and that, too, with 
a previous knowledge of her face. Al- 
though her unchanging black dress was 
in every plait precisely as of old, and 
her unchanging attitude was rigidly 
preserved, a very slight additional set- 
ting of her features and contraction of 
her gloomy forehead was so powerfully 
marked, that it marked everything about 
her. 

“ Who are these ! ” she said, wonder- 
ingly, as the two attendants entered. 
“ What do these people want here ? ” 

“ Who are these, dear madam, is 
it ? ” returned Rigaud. “ Faith, they are 
friends of your son the prisoner. And 
what do they want here, is it? Death, 
madam, I don’t know. You will do 
well to ask them.” 

“You know you told us, at the door, 
not to go yet,” said Pancks. 

“ And you know you told me, at the 
door, you didn’t mean to go,” retorted 
Rigaud. “ In a word, madam, permit 
me to present two spies of the prisoner’s, 
— madmen, but spies. If you wish them 
to remain here during our little conver- 
sation, say the word. It is nothing to 
me.” 

“ Why should I wish them to remain 
here?” said Mrs. Clennam. “What 
have I to do with them ? ” 

“ Then, dearest madam,” said Ri- 
gaud, throwing himself into an arm- 
chair so heavily that the old room 
trembled, “ you will do well to dismiss 
them. It is your affair. They are not 
my spies, not my rascals.” 

“ Hark ! You Pancks,” said Mrs. 
Clennam, bending her brows upon him 
angrily, “ you Casby’s clerk ! Attend 
to your employer’s business and your 
own. Go. And take that other man 
with you.” 

“Thank you, ma’am,” returned Mr. 
Pancks, “I am glad to say I see no 
objection to our both retiring. We 
have done all we undertook to do for 
Mr. Clennam. His constant anxiety 
has been (and it grew worse upon him 
when he became a prisoner), that this 


agreeable gentleman should be brought 
back here, to the place from which he 
slipped away. Here he is — brought 
back. And I will say,” added Mr. 
Pancks, “ to his ill-looking face, that 
in my opinion the world would be no 
worse for his slipping out of it alto- 
gether.” 

“Your opinion is not asked,” an- 
swered Mrs. Clennam. “ Go.” 

“ I am sorry not to leave you in bet- 
ter company, ma’am,” said Pancks ; 
“and sorry, too, that Mr. Clennam 
can’t be present. It’s my fault, that 
is.” 

“ You mean his own,” she returned. 

“ No, I mean mine, ma’am,” said 
Pancks, “for it was my misfortune to 
lead him into a ruinous investment.” 
(Mr. Pancks still clung to that word, 
and never said speculation.) “ Though 
I can prove by figures,” added Mr. 
Pancks, with an anxious countenance, 
“that it ought to have been a good in- 
vestment. I have gone over it since 
it failed, every day of my life, and it 
comes out, regarded as a question of 
figures, triumphant. The present is not 
a time or place,” Mr. Pancks pursued, 
with a longing glance into his hat, 
where he kept his calculations, “for 
entering upon the figures ; but the fig- 
ures are not to be disputed. Mr. Clen- 
nam ought to have been at this moment 
in his carriage and pair, and I ought to 
have been worth from three to five 
thousand pound.” 

Mr. Pancks put his hair erect with a 
general aspect of confidence, that could 
hardly have been surpassed if he had 
had the amount in his pocket. These 
incontrovertible figures had been the 
occupation of every moment of his leis- 
ure since he had lost his money, and 
were destined to afford hirfi consolation 
to the end of his days. 

“However,” said Mr. Pancks, 
“enough of that. Altro, old boy, you 
have seen the figures, and you know 
how they come out.” Mr. Baptist, who 
had not the slightest arithmetical power 
of compensating himself in this way, 
nodded, with a fine display of bright 
teeth. 

At whom Mr. Flintwinch had been 
looking, and to whom he then said, — 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


445 


“Oh! It’s you, is it? I thought I 
remembered your face, but I wasn’t 
certain till I saw your teeth. Ah ! yes, 
to be sure. It was this officious refu- 
gee,” said Jeremiah to Mrs. Clennam, 
“who came knocking at the door, on 
the night when Arthur and Chatterbox 
were here, and who asked me a whole 
Catechism of questions about Mr. 
Blandois.” 

“It is true,” Mr. Baptist cheerfully 
admitted. “ And behold him, padrone ! 
I have found him consequentemen- 
tally.” 

“I shouldn’t have objected,” re- 
turned Mr. Flintwincli, “ to your hav- 
ing broken your neck consequentemen- 
tally.” 

“ And now,” said Mr. Pancks, whose 
eye had often stealthily wandered to the 
window-seat, and the stocking that was 
being mended there, “ I ’ve only one 
other word to say before I go. If Mr. 
Clennam was here, — but unfortunately, 
though he has so far got the better of 
this fine gentleman as to return him to 
this place against his will, he is ill and 
in prison, — ill and in prison, poor fel- 
low, — if he was here,” said Mr. 
Pancks, taking one step aside towards 
the window-seat, and laying his right 
hand upon the stocking, “ he would 
say, ‘ Affery, tell your dreams ! ’ ” 

Mr. Pancks held up his right fore- 
finger between his nose and the stock- 
ing, with a ghostly air of warning, 
turned, steamed out, and towed Mr. 
Baptist after him. The house door was 
heard to close upon them, their steps 
were heard passing over the dull pave- 
ment of the echoing courtyard, and still 
nobody had added a word. Mrs. Clen- 
nam and Jeremiah had exchanged a 
look ; and had then looked, and looked 
still, at Affery ; who sat mending the 
stocking with great assiduity. 

“ Come ! ” said Mr. Flintwinch, at 
length, screwing himself a curve or two 
in the direction of the window-seat, and 
rubbing the palms of his hands on his 
coat-tail as if he were preparing them 
to do something : “ whatever has to be 
said among us, had better be begun to 
be said, without more loss of time. — 
So, Affery, my woman, take yourself 
away ! ” 


In a moment, Affery had thrown the 
stocking down, started up, caught hold 
of the window-sill with her right hand, 
lodged herself upon the window-seat 
with her right knee, and was flourish- 
ing her left hand, beating expected as- 
sailants off. 

“ No, I won’t, Jeremiah, — no I won’t, 
— no I won’t! I won’t go, I’ll stay 
here. I ’ll hear all I don’t know, and 
say all I know. I will, at last, if I die 
for it. I will, I will, I will, I will ! ” 

Mr. Flintwinch, stiffening with indig- 
nation and amazement, moistened the 
fingers of one hand at his lips, softly 
described a circle with them in the palm 
of the other hand, and continued with a 
menacing grin to screw himself in the 
direction of his wife, gasping some re- 
mark as he advanced, of which, in his 
choking anger, only the words “ Such 
a dose ! ” were audible. 

“ Not a bit nearer, Jeremiah ! ” cried 
Affery, never ceasing to beat the air. 
“ Don’t come a bit nearer to me, or I ’ll 
rouse the neighborhood ! I ’ll throw 
myself out of window ! I ’ll scream Fire 
and Murder ! I ’ll wake the dead ! 
Stop where you are, or I ’ll make 
shrieks enough to wake the dead ! ” 

The determined voice of Mrs. Clen- 
nam echoed, “ Stop ! ” Jeremiah had 
stopped already. 

“It is closing in, Flintwinch. Let 
her alone. Affery, do you turn against 
me after these many years ? ” 

“I do, if it ’s turning against you to 
hear what I don’t know, and say what 
I know. I have broke out now, and I 
can’t go back. I am determined to do 
it. I will do it, I will, I will, I will ! 
If that’s turning against you, yes, I 
turn against both of you two clever 
ones. I told Arthur, when he first come 
home, to stand up against you. I told 
him it was no reason, because I was 
afeard of my life of you, that he should 
be. All manner of things have been a 
going on since then, and I won’t be run 
up by Jeremiah, nor yet I won’t be 
dazed and scared, nor made a party to 
I don’t know what, no more. I won’t, 
I won’t, I won’t ! I ’ll up for Arthur 
when he has nothing left, and is ill, and 
in prison, and can’t up for himself. I 
will, I will, I will, I will ! ” 


44 & 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


*' How do you know, you heap of 
confusion,” asked Mrs. Clennam, stern- 
ly, “that in doing what you are doing 
now, you are even serving Arthur?” 

“ I don’t know nothing rightly about 
anything,” said Affery; “and if ever 
you said a true word in your life, it ’s 
when you call me a heap of confusion, 
for you two clever ones have done your 
most to make me such. You married 
me whether I liked it or not, and you ’ve 
led me, pretty well ever since, such a 
life of dreaming and frightening as 
never was known, and what do you ex- 
pect me to be but a heap of confusion ? 
You wanted to make me such, and I 
am such ; but I won’t submit no longer ; 
no, I won’t, I won’t, I won’t, I won’t ! ” 
She was still beating the air against all 
comers. 

After gazing at her in silence, Mrs. 
Clennam turned to Rigaud. “ You see 
and hear this foolish creature. Do you 
object to such a piece of distraction re- 
maining where she is?” 

“I, madam?” he replied, “do I? 
That’s a question for you.” 

“I do not,” she said, gloomily. 
“There is little left to choose now. 
Flintwinch, it is closing in.” 

Mr. Flintwinch replied by directing 
a look of red vengeance at his wife, and 
then, as if to pinion himself from falling 
upon her, screwed his crossed arms into 
the breast of his waistcoat, and with his 
chin very near one of his elbows stood 
in a corner, watching Rigaud in the 
oddest attitude. Rigaud for his part 
arose from his chair, and seated himself 
on the table, with his legs dangling. 
In this easy attitude, he met Mrs. 
Clennam’s set face, with his mustache 
going up, and his nose coming down. 

“ Madam, I am a gentleman — ” 

“Of whom,” she interrupted in her 
steady tones, “ I have heard dispar- 
agement, in connection with a French 
jail, and an accusation of murder.” 

He kissed his hand to her, with his 
exaggerated gallantry. “Perfectly. Ex- 
actly. Of a lady too ! What absurdi- 
ty ! How incredible ! I had the honor 
of making a great success then ; I hope 
to have the honor of making a great 
success now. I kiss your hands. Mad- 
am, I am a gentleman (I was going to 


observe), who, when he says, * I will 
definitely finish this or that affair at the 
present sitting,’ does definitely finish it. 
I announce to you, that we are arrived 
at our last sitting, on our little business. 
You do me the favor to follow, and to 
comprehend?” 

She kept her eyes fixed upon him 
with a frown. “Yes.” 

“ Further, I am a gentleman to whom 
mere mercenary trade bargains are un- 
known, but to whom money is always 
acceptable as the means of pursuing his 
pleasures. You do me the favor to fol- 
low, and to comprehend ? ” 

“ Scarcely necessary to ask, one would 
say. Yes.” 

“ Further, I am a gentleman of the 
softest and sweetest disposition, but who, 
if trifled with, becomes enraged. Noble 
natures under such circumstances be- 
come enraged. I possess a noble na- 
ture. When the lion is awakened, — 
that is to say, when I enrage, — the sat- 
isfaction of my animosity is as accepta- 
ble to me as money. You always do 
me the favor to follow, and to compre- 
hend?” 

“Yes,” she answered, somewhat 
louder than before. 

“ Do not let me derange you ; pray 
be tranquil. I have said we are now 
arrived at our last sitting. Allow me to 
recall the two sittings we have held.” 

“ It is not necessary.” 

“Death, madam,” he burst out, 
“ it ’s my fancy ! Besides, it clears the 
way. The first sitting was limited. I 
had the honor of making your acquaint- 
ance, — of presenting my letter ; I am 
a Knight of Industry, at your service, 
madam, but my polished manners had 
won me so much of success, as a master 
of languages, among your compatriots 
who are as stiff as their own starch is to 
one another, but are ever ready to relax 
to a foreign gentleman of polished man- 
ners, — and of observing one or two 
little things,” he glanced around the 
room and smiled, “ about this honorable 
house, to know which was necessary to 
assure me, and to convince me that I 
had the distinguished pleasure of mak- 
ing the acquaintance of the lady I 
sought. I achieved this. I gave my 
word of honor to our dear Flintwinch 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


447 


that I would return. I gracefully de- 
parted.” 

Her face neither acquiesced nor de- 
murred. The same when he paused 
and when he spoke, it as yet showed 
him always the one attentive frown, 
and the dark revelation before men- 
tioned of her being nerved for the oc- 
casion. 

“I say, gracefully departed, because 
it was graceful to retire without alarm- 
ing a lady. To be morally graceful, not 
less than physically, is a part of the 
character of Rigaud Blandois. It was 
also politic, as leaving you, with some- 
thing overhanging you, to expect me 
again with a little anxiety, on a day not 
named. But your slave is politic. By 
Heaven, madam, politic ! Let us re- 
turn. On the day not named, I have 
again the honor to render myself at your 
house. I intimate that I have some- 
thing to sell, which, if not bought, will 
compromise madam whom I highly 
esteem. I explain myself generally. I 
demand — I think it was a thousand 
pounds. Will you correct me ? ” 

Thus forced to speak, she replied, 
with constraint, “You demanded as 
much as a thousand pounds.” 

“ I demand at present Two. Such 
are the evils of delay. But to return 
once more. We are not accordant ; we 
differ on that occasion. I am playful ; 
playfulness is a part of my amiable 
character. Playfully, I become as one 
slain and hidden. For it may alone be 
worth half the sum, to madam, to be 
freed from the suspicions that my droll 
idea awakens. Accident and spies in- 
termix themselves against my playful- 
ness, and spoil the fruit, perhaps — who 
knows ? only you and Flintwinch — 
when it is just ripe. Thus, madam, I 
am here for the last time. Listen ! 
Definitely the last.” 

As he struck his straggling boot-heels 
against the flap of the table, meeting 
her frown with an insolent gaze, he 
began to change his tone for a fiercer 
one. 

“ Bah ! Stop an instant ! Let us ad- 
vance by steps. Here is my Hotel- 
note to be paid, according to contract. 
Five minutes hence we may be at dag- 
gers’ points. I ’ll not leave it till then, 


1 or you ’ll cheat me. Pay it ! Count 
me the money ? ” 

“Take it from his hand and pay it, 
Flintwinch,” said Mrs. Clennam. 

He spirted it into Mr. Flintwinch’s 
face, when the old man advanced to 
take it ; and held forth his hand, re- 
peating noisily, “ Pay it ! Count it 
out ! Good money ! ” Jeremiah 
picked the bill up, looked at the total 
with a bloodshot eye, took a small can- 
vas bag from his pocket, and told the 
amount into his hand. 

Rigaud chinked the money, weighed 
it in his hand, threw it up a little way 
and caught it, chinked it again. 

“ The sound of it, to the bold Rigaud 
Blandois, is like the taste of fresh meat 
to the tiger. Say, then, madam. 
How much ? ” 

He turned upon her suddenly, with a 
menacing gesture of the weighted hand 
that clenched the money, as if he were 
going to strike her with it. 

“ I tell you again, as I told you be- 
fore, that we are not rich here, as you 
suppose us to be, and that your demand 
is excessive. I have not the present 
means of complying with such a de- 
mand, if I had ever so great an incli- 
nation.” 

“If!” cried Rigaud. “Hear this 
lady with her If! Wifl you say that 
you have not the inclination? ” 

“ I will say what presents itself to 
me, and not what presents itself to you.” 

“Say it then. As to the inclination. 
Quick ! Come to the inclination, and 
I know what to do.” 

She was no quicker, and no slower, in 
her reply. “ It would seem that you 
have obtained possession of a paper — 
or of papers — which I assuredly have 
the inclination to recover.” 

Rigaud, with a loud laugh, drummed 
his heels against the table, and chinked 
his money. “ I think so ! I believe 
you there ! ” 

“ The paper might be worth, to me, 
a sum of money. I cannot say how 
much, or how little.” 

“What the devil!” he asked sav- 
agely. “Not after a week’s grace to 
consider ? ” 

“ No ! I will not, out of my scanty 
means, — for I tell you again, we are 


448 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


poor here, and not rich, — I will not 
offer any price for a power that I do 
not know the worst and the fullest ex- 
tent of. This is the third time of your 
hinting and threatening. You must 
speak explicitly, or you may go where 
you will and do what you will. It is 
better to be torn to pieces at a spring 
than to be a mouse at the caprice of 
such a cat.” 

He looked at her so hard with those 
eyes too near together, that the sinister 
sight of each, crossing that of the other, 
seemed to make the bridge of his 
hooked nose crooked. After a long 
survey, he said, with the further setting- 
off of his infernal smile, — 

“You are a bold woman ! ” 

“ I am a resolved woman.” 

“You always were. What? She 
always was ; is it not so, my little Flint- 
winch ? ” 

“Flintwinch, say nothing to him. It 
is for him to say here, and now, all he 
can ; or to go hence, and do all he can. 
You know this to be our determination. 
Leave him to his action on it.” 

She did not shrink under his evil leer, 
or avoid it. He turned it upon her again, 
but she remained steady at the point to 
which she had fixed herself. He got 
off the table, placed a chair near the 
sofa, sat dowm in it, and leaned an arm 
upon the sofa close to her own, which 
he touched with his hand. Her face 
was ever frowning, attentive, and set- 
tled. 

“ It is your pleasure then, madame, 
that I shall relate a morsel of family 
history in this little family society,” 
said Rigaud, with a warning play of his 
lithe fingers on her arm. “ I am some- 
thing of a doctor. Let me touch your 
pulse.” 

She suffered him to take her wrist in 
his hand. Holding it he proceeded to 
say, — 

“A history of a strange marriage, 
and a strange mother, and a revenge, 
and a suppression. — Ay, ay, ay ? This 
pulse is beating curiously ! It appears 
to me that it doubles while I touch 
it. Are these the usual changes of 
your malady, madame? ” 

There was a struggle in her maimed 
arm as she twisted it away, but there 


was none in her face. On his face there 
was his own smile. 

“ I have lived an adventurous life. 
I am an adventurous character. I have 
known many adventurers ; interesting 
spirits, — amiable society ! To one of 
them I owe my knowledge, and my 
proofs — I repeat it, estimable lady, 
proofs — of the ravishing little family 
history I go to commence. You will be 
charmed with it. But, bah ! I forget. 
One should name a history. Shall I 
name it the history of a house? But, bah, 
again. There are so many houses. Shall 
I name it the history of this house ? ” 

Leaning over the sofa, poised on two 
legs of his chair and his left elbow ; that 
hand often tapping her arm, to beat his 
words home ; his legs crossed ; his right 
hand sometimes arranging his hair, 
sometimes smoothing his mustache, 
sometimes striking his nose, always 
threatening her, whatever it did ; coarse, 
insolent, rapacious, cruel, and power- 
ful ; he pursued his narrative at his ease. 

“ In fine, then, I name it the his- 
tory of this house. I commence it. 
There live here, let us suppose* an un- 
cle and nephew. The uncle, a rigid 
old gentleman of strong force of charac- 
ter ; the nephew, habitually timid, re- 
pressed, and under constraint.” 

M istress Affery, fixedly attentive in the 
window-seat, biting the rolled-up end of 
her apron, and trembling from head to 
foot, here cried out, “Jeremiah, keep off 
from me ! I ’ve heerd, in my dreams, of 
Arthur’s father and his uncle. He ’s a 
talking of them. It was before my time 
here ; but I ’ve heerd in my dreams 
that Arthur’s father was a poor, irreso- 
lute, frightened chap, who had had 
everything but his orphan life scared 
out of him when he was young, and that 
he had no voice in the choice of his wife 
even, but his uncle chose her. There 
she sits ! I heerd it in my dreams, and 
you said it to her own self.” 

As Mr. Flintwinch shook his fist at 
her, and as Mrs. Clennam gazed upon 
her, Rigaud kissed his hand to her. 

“ Perfectly right, dear Madame Flint- 
winch. You have a genius for dream- 
ing.” 

“ I don’t want none of your praises,” 
returned Affery. “ I don’t want to have 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


449 


nothing at all to say to you. But Jere- 
miah said they was dreams, and I ’ll 
tell ’em as such ! ” Here she put her 
apron in her mouth again as if she were 
stopping, somebody else’s mouth, — per- 
haps Jeremiah’s, which was chattering 
with threats as if he were grimly cold. 

“ Our beloved Madame Flintwinch,” 
said Rigaud, “ developing all of a sud- 
den a fine susceptibility and spirituality, 
is right to a marvel. Yes. So runs the 
history. Monsieur, the uncle, com- 
mands the nephew to marry. Monsieur 
says to him in effect, ‘ My nephew, I in- 
troduce to you a lady of strong force of 
character, like myself ; a resolved lady, 
a stern lady, a lady who has a will that 
can break the weak to powder ; a lady 
without pity, without love, implacable, 
revengeful, cold as the stone, but rag- 
ing as the fire. ’ Ah, what fortitude ! 
Ah, what superiority of intellectual 
strength ! Truly, a proud and noble 
character that I describe in the supposed 
words of monsieur, the uncle. Ha, ha, 
ha. Death of my soul, I love the sweet 
lady ! ” 

Mrs. Clennam’s face had changed. 
There was a remarkable darkness of 
color on it, and the brow was more con- 
tracted. “ Madam, madam,” said Ri- 
gaud, tapping her on the arm, as if 
his cruel hand were sounding a musical 
instrument, “ I perceive I interest you. 

I perceive I awaken your sympathy. 
Let us go on ! ” 

The drooping nose and the ascending 
mustache had, however, to be hidden 
for a moment with the white hand, be- 
fore he could go on, he enjoyed the ef- 
fect he made so much. 

“The nephew, being, as the lucid 
Madame Flintwinch has remarked, a 
poor devil who has had everything but 
his orphan life frightened and famished 
out of him, — the nephew abases his 
head, and makes response ; ‘ My uncle, 
it is you to command. Do as you will ! ’ 
Monsieur, the uncle, does as he will. 
It is what he always does. The auspi- 
cious nuptials take place ; the newly 
married come home to this charming 
mansion ; the lady is received, let us 
suppose, by Flintwinch. Hey, old in- 
triguer?” 

Jeremiah, with his eyes upon hismis- 

29 


tress, made no reply. Rigaud looked 
from one to the other, struck his ugly 
nose, and made a chuckling with his 
tongue. 

“ Soon the lady makes a singular and 
exciting discovery. Thereupon full of 
anger, full of jealousy, full of vengeance, 
she forms — see you, madam ! — a 
scheme of retribution, the weight of 
which she ingeniously forces her crushed 
husband to bear himself, as well as exe- 
cute upon her enemy. What superior 
intelligence ! ” 

“ Keep off, Jeremiah ! ” cried the 
palpitating Affery, taking her apron 
from her mouth again. “ But it was 
one of my dreams that you told her, 
when you quarrelled with her one win- 
ter evening, at dusk, — there she sits 
and you looking at her, — that she 
oughtn’t to have let Arthur, when he 
come home, suspect his father only ; 
that she had always had the strength 
and the power ; and that she ought to 
have stood up more, to Arthur, for his 
father. It was in the same dream 
where you said to her that she was not 
— not something, but I don’t know 
what, for she burst out tremendous and 
stopped you. You know the dream as 
well as I do. When you come down 
stairs into the kitchen with the candle 
in your hand, and hitched my apron off 
my head. When you told me I had 
been dreaming. When you wouldn’t 
believe the noises.” After this explo- 
sion Affery put her apron into her 
mouth again ; always keeping her hand 
on the window-sill, and her knee on 
the window-seat, ready to cry out or 
jump out, if her lord and master ap- 
proached. 

Rigaud had not lost a word of this. 

“ Haha ! ” he cried, lifting his eye- 
brows, folding his arms, and leaning 
back in his chair. “ Assuredly, Madame 
Flintwinch is an oracle ! How shall 
we interpret the oracle, you and I, and 
the old intrigirer? He said that you 
were not — ? Ahd you burst out and 
stopped him ! What was it you were 
not? What is it you $re not? Say 
then, madam ! ” k JaP 

Under this ferocious banter, she sat 
breathing harder, and her mouth was 
disturbed. Her lips quivered and 


45 ° 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


opened, in spite of her utmost efforts to 
keep them still. 

“ Come then, madam ! Speak, then ! 
Our old intriguer said that you were 
not — and you stopped him. He was 
going to say that you were not — what ? 
I know already, but I want a little con- 
fidence from you. How, then? You 
are not what?” 

She tried again to repress herself, but 
broke out vehemently, “ Not Arthur’s 
mother ! ” 

“Good,” said Rigaud. “You are 
amenable.” 

With the set expression of her face 
all torn away by the explosion of her 
passion, and with a bursting from every 
rent feature of the smouldering fire so 
long pent up, she cried out : “ I will tell 
it myself ! I will not hear it from your 
lips, and with the taint of your wicked- 
ness upon it. Since it must be seen, I 
will have it seen by the light I stood 
in. Not another word. Hear me ! ” 

“Unless you are a more obstinate 
and more persisting woman than even I 
know you to be,” Mr. Flintwinch inter- 
posed, “ you had better leave Mr. Ri- 
gaud, Mr. Blandois, Mr. Beelzebub, to 
tell it in his own way. What does it 
signify, when he knows all about it?” 

“ He does not know all about it.”. 

“ He knows all he cares about it,” 
Mr. Flintwinch testily urged. 

“He does not know meT 

“ What do you suppose he cares for 
you, you conceited woman ? ” said Mr. 
Flintwinch* 

“ I tell you, Flintwinch, I will speak. 
I tell you, when it has come to this, I 
will tell it with my own lips, and will 
express myself throughout it. What ! 
Have I suffered nothing in this room, 
no deprivation, no imprisonment, that 
I should condescend at last to contem- 
plate myself in such a glass as that ! 
Can you see him ? Can you hear him ? 
I f your wife were a hundred times the 
ingrate that she is, and if I were a 
Thousand times more hopeless than I 
am of inducing her to be silent if this 
man is silenced, I would tell it myself, 
before I would bear the torment of 
hearing it from him.” 

Rigaud pushed his chair a little 
back ; pushed his legs out straight be- 


fore him ; and sat with his arms folded, 
over against her. 

“You do not know what it is,” she 
went on, addressing him, “ to be 
brought up strictly and straitly. I was 
so brought up. Mine was no light 
youth of sinful gayety and pleasure. 
Mine were days of wholesome repres- 
sion, punishment, and fear. The cor- 
ruption of our hearts, the evil of our 
ways, the curse that is upon us, the 
terrors that surround us, — these were 
the themes of my childhood. They 
formed my character, and filled me with 
an abhorrence of evil-doers. When old 
Mr. Gilbert Clennam proposed his 
orphan nephew to my father for my 
husband, my father impressed upon me 
that his bringing-up had been, like 
mine, one of severe restraint. He told 
me, that, besides the discipline his 
spirit had undergone, he had lived in a 
starved house, where rioting and gayety 
were unknown, and where every day 
was a day of toil and trial like the last. 
He told me that he had been a man in 
years, long before his uncle had ac- 
knowledged him as one ; and that, from 
his school-days to that hour, his uncle’s 
roof had been a sanctuary to him from 
the contagion of the irreligious and dis- 
solute. Whfn, within a twelvemonth 
of our marriage, I found my husband, 
at that time when my father spoke of 
him, to have sinned against the Lord 
and outraged me by holding a guilty 
creature in my place, was I to doubt 
that it had been appointed to me to 
make the discovery, and that it was 
appointed to me to lay the hand of pun- 
ishment upon that creature of perdi- 
tion ? Was I to dismiss in a moment — 
not my own wrongs — what was I ! but 
all the rejection of sin, and all the war 
against it, in which I had been bred ? ” 

She laid her wrathful hand upon the 
watch on the table. 

“No! ‘ Do not forget.’ The initials 
of those words are within here now, and 
were within here then. I was appointed 
to find the old letter that referred to 
them, and that told me what they meant, 
and whose work they were, and why 
they were worked, lying with this watch 
in his secret drawer. But for that ap- 
pointment, there would have been no 


LITTLE DORRIT 


45i 


discovery. ‘Do not forget.’ It spoke 
to me like a voice from an angry cloud. 
Do not forget the deadly sin, do not 
forget the appointed discovery, do not 
forget the appointed suffering. I did 
not forget. Was it my own wrong I re- 
membered ? Mine ! I was but a ser- 
vant and a minister. What power could 
I have had over them, but that they 
were bound in the bonds of their sin, 
and delivered to me!” 

More than forty years had passed 
over the gray head of this determined 
woman, since the time she recalled. 
More than forty years of strife and 
struggle with the whisper that, by what- 
ever name she called her vindictive 
pride and rage, nothing through all 
eternity could change their nature. 
Yet, gone those more than forty years, 
and come this Nemesis now looking her 
in the face, she still abided by her old 
impiety, — still reversed the order of 
Creation, and breathed her own breath 
into a clay image of her Creator. Ver- 
ily, verily, travellers have seen many 
monstrous idols in many countries ; 
but no human eyes have ever seen more 
daring, gross, and shocking images of 
the Divine nature, than we creatures 
of the dust make, in our own likenesses, 
of our own bad passions. 

“ When I forced him to give her up 
to me, by her name and place of abode,” 
she went on in her torrent of indigna- 
tion and defence, — “when I accused 
her and she fell hiding her face at my 
feet, was it my injury that I asserted, 
were they my reproaches that I poured 
upon her ? Those who were appointed 
of old to go to wicked kings and accuse 
them, — were they not ministers and 
servants? And had not I, unworthy, 
and far removed from them, sin to de- 
nounce ? When she pleaded to me her 
youth, and his wretched and hard life 
(that was her phrase for the virtuous 
training he had belied), and the dese- 
crated ceremony of marriage there had 
secretly been between them, and the 
terrors of want and shame that had 
overwhelmed them both, when I was 
first appointed to be the instrument of 
their punishment, and the love (for 
she said the word to me, down at my 
feet) in which she had abandoned him, 


and left him to me, was it my enemy 
that became my footstool, were they 
the words of my wrath that made her 
shrink and quiver ! Not unto me the 
strength be ascribed ; not unto me the 
wringing of the expiation ! ” 

Many years had come and gone, 
since she had had the free use even of 
her fingers; but it was noticeable that 
she had already more than once struck 
her clenched hand vigorously upon the 
table, and that when she said these 
words she raised her whole arm in the 
air, as though it had been a common 
action with her. 

“And what was the repentance that 
was extorted from the hardness of her 
heart and the blackness of her deprav- 
ity? I, vindictive and implacable? It 
may seem so, to such as you w'ho know 
no righteousness, and no appointment 
except Satan’s. Laugh ; but I will be 
known as I know myself, and as Flint- 
winch knows me, though it is only to 
you and this half-witted woman.” 

“Add, to yourself, madam,” said 
Rigaud. “ I have my little suspicions, 
that madam is rather solicitous to be 
justified to herself.” 

“ It is false. It is not so. I have no 
need to be,” she said, with great energy 
and anger. 

“ Truly?” retorted Rigaud. “Hah!” 

“ I ask, what was the penitence, in 
works, that was demanded of her? 
‘You have a child ; I have none. You 
love that child. Give him to me. He 
shall believe himself to bquny son, and 
he shall be believed by every one to be 
my son. To save you from exposure, 
his father shall swear never to see or 
communicate with you more ; equally to 
save him from being stripped by his 
uncle, and to save your child from being 
a beggar, you shall swear never to see 
or communicate w'ith either of them 
more. That done, and your present 
means, derived from my husband, 
renounced, I charge myself with your 
support. You may, with } T our place of 
retreat unknown, then leave, if you 
please, uncontradicted by me, the lie 
that when you passed out of all knowl- 
edge but mine, you merited a good 
name.’ That was all. She had to sac- 
rifice her sinful and shameful affections, 


452 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


no more. She was then free to bear 
her load of guilt in secret, and to break 
her heart in secret ; and through such 
present misery (light enough for her, I 
think ! ) to purchase her redemption 
from endless misery, if she could. If, 
in this, I punished her here, did I not 
open to her a way hereafter? If she 
knew herself to be surrounded by insa- 
tiable vengeance and unquenchable fires, 
were they mine? If I threatened her, 
then and afterwards, with the terrors 
that encompassed her, did I hold them 
in my right hand? ” 

She turned the watch upon the table, 
and opened it, and, with an unsoftening 
face, looked at the worked letters with- 
in. 

“ They did not forget. It is appoint- 
ed against such offences that the offend- 
ers shall not be able to forget. If the 
presence of Arthur was a daily reproach 
to his father, and if the absence of 
Arthur was a daily agony to his mother, 
that was the just dispensation of Jeho- 
vah. As well might it be charged upon 
me, that the stings of an awakened con- 
science drove her mad, and that it was 
the will of the Disposer of all things 
that she should live so, many years. I 
devoted myself to reclaim the otherwise 
predestined and lost boy ; to give him 
the reputation of an honest origin ; to 
bring him up in fear and trembling, and 
in a life of practical contrition for the 
sins that were heavy on his head before 
his entrance into this condemned world. 
Was that a cruelty? Was I, too, not 
visited with consequences of the origi- 
nal offence, in which I had no compli- 
city? Arthur’s father and I lived no 
farther apart, with half the globe be- 
tween us, than when we were together 
in this house. He died, and sent this 
watch back to me, with its Do not for- 
get. I do not forget, though I do not 
read it as he did. I read in it, that I 
was appointed to do these things. I 
have so read these three letters since I 
have had them lying on this table, and 
I did so read them, with equal distinct- 
ness, when they were thousands of miles 
away.” 

As she took the watch-case in her 
hand, with that new freedom in the use 
of her hand of which she showed no 


consciousness whatever, bending her 
eyes upon it as if she were defying it to 
move her, Rigaud cried with a loud and 
contemptuous snapping of his fingers, 
“ Come, madam ! Time runs out. 
Come, lady of piety, it must be ! You 
can tell nothing I don’t know. Come 
to the money stolen, or I will ! Death 
of my soul, I have had enough of 
your other jargon. Come straight to 
the stolen money ! ” 

“ Wretch that you are,” she an- 
swered, and now her hands clasped her 
head ; “ through what fatal error of 
Flintwinch’s, through what incomplete- 
ness on his part, who was the only other 
person helping in these things and 
trusted with them, through whose and 
what bringing together of the ashes of 
a burnt paper, you have become pos- 
sessed of that codicil, I know no more 
than how you acquire^ the rest of your 
power here — ” 

“And yet,” interrupted Rigaud, “it 
is my odd fortune to have by me, in a 
convenient place that I know of, that 
same short little addition to the will of 
Monsieur Gilbert Clennam, written by 
a lady and witnessed by the same lady, 
and our old intriguer ! Ah, bah, old 
intriguer, crooked little puppet ! Ma- 
dame, let us go on. Time presses. You 
or I to finish ? ” 

“ I ! ” she answered, with increased 
determination, if it were possible. “ I, 
because I will not endure to be shown 
myself, and have myself shown to any 
one, with your horrible distortion upon 
me. You, with your practices of infa- 
mous foreign prisons and galleys, would 
make it the money that impelled me. 
It was not the money.” 

“ Bah, bah, bah ! I repudiate, for 
the moment, my politeness, and say, 
Lies, lies, lies. You know you sup- 
pressed the deed, and kept the mon- 
ey.” 

“ Not for the money’s sake, wretch ! ” 
She made a struggle as if she were start- 
ing up ; even as if, in her vehemence, 
she had almost risen on her disabled feet. 
“ If Gilbert Clennam, reduced to imbe- 
cility, at the point of death, and laboring 
under the delusion of some imaginary 
relenting towards a girl, of whom he 
had heard that his nephew had once 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


453 


had a fancy for her, which he had 
crushed out of him, and that she after- 
wards drooped away into melancholy 
and withdrawal from all who knew her, 
— if, in that state of weakness, he dic- 
tated to me, whose life she had dark- 
ened with her sin, and who had been 
appointed to know her wickedness from 
her own hand and her own lips, a be- 
quest meant as a recompense to her 
for supposed unmerited suffering ; was 
there no difference between my spurn- 
ing that injustice, and coveting mere 
money, — a thing which you, and your 
comrades in the prisons, may steal from 
any one ? ” 

“Timepresses, madame. Takecare ! ” 

“ If this house was blazing from the 
roof to the ground,” she returned, “I 
would stay in it to justify myself against 
my righteous motives being classed with 
those of stabbers and thieves.” 

Rigaud snapped his fingers tauntingly 
in her face. “ One thousand guineas 
to the little beauty you slowly hunted to 
death. One thousand guineas to the 
youngest daughter her patron might 
have at fifty, or (if he had none) broth- 
er’s youngest daughter, on her coming 
of age, ‘as the remembrance his disin- 
terestedness may like best, of his pro- 
tection of a friendless young orphan 
girl.’ Two thousand guineas. What ! 
You will never come to the money? ” 

“ That patron,” she was vehemently 
proceeding, when he checked her. 

“Names! Call him Mr. Frederick 
Dorrit. No more evasions.” 

“That Frederick Dorrit was the be- 
ginning of it all. If he had not been a 
player of music, and had not kept, in 
those days of his youth and prosperity, 
an idle house w r here singers, and play- 
ers, and such-like children of Evil, 
turned their backs on the Light and 
their faces to the Darkness, she might 
have remained in her lowly station, and 
might not have been raised out of it to 
be cast down. But, no. Satan entered 
into that Frederick Dorrit, and coun- 
selled him that he was a man of inno- 
cent and laudable tastes who did kind 
actions, and that here was a poor girl 
with a voice for singing music with. 
Then he is to have her taught. Then 
Arthur’s father, who has all along been 


secretly pining, in the ways of virtuous 
ruggedness, for those accursed snares 
which are called the Arts, becomes ac- 
quainted with her. And so, a graceless 
orphan, training to be a singing-girl, 
carries it, by that Frederick Dorrit’s 
agency, against me, and I am humbled 
and deceived ! — Not I, that is to say,” 
she added quickly, as color flushed into 
her face; “ a greater than I. What am 
I?” 


Jeremiah Flintwinch, who had been 
gradually screwing himself towards her, 
and who was now very near her elbow 
without her knowing it, made a special- 
ly wry face of objection when she said 
these words, and moreover twitched 
his gaiters, as if such pretensions 
were equivalent to little barbs in his 
legs. 

“ Lastly,” she continued, “for I am 
at the end of these things, and I will 
say no more of them, and you shall say 
no more of them, and all that remains 
will be to determine whether the knowl- 
edge of them can be kept among us who 
are here present, — lastly, when I sup- 
pressed that paper, with the knowledge 
of Arthur’s father — ” 

“ But not with his consent, you 
know,” said Mr. Flintwinch. 

“ Who said with his consent? ” She 
started to find Jeremiah so near her, 
and drew back her head, looking at him 
with some rising distrust. “You were 
often enough between us, when he would 
have had me produce it and I would 
not, to have contradicted me if I had 
said, with his consent. I say, when I 
suppressed that paper, I made no effort 
to destroy it, but kept it by me, here in 
this house, many years. The rest of 
the Gilbert property being left to Ar- 
thur’s father, I could at any time, with- 
out unsettling more than the two sums, 
have made a pretence of finding it. 
But, besides that I must have supported 
such pretence by a direct falsehood, (a 
great responsibility,) I have seen no 
new reason, in all the time I have been 
tried here, to bring it to light. It was 
a rewarding of sin ; the wrong result of 
a delusion. I did what I was appointed 
to do, and I have undergone, within 
these four walls, what I was appointed 
to undergo. When the paper was at 


454 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


last destroyed — as I thought — in my 
presence, she had long been dead, and 
her patron, Frederick Dorrit, had long 
been deservedly ruined and imbecile. 
He had no daughter. I had found the 
niece before then ; and what I did for 
her was better for her, far, than the 
money of which she would have had 
no good.” She added, after a moment, 
as though she addressed the watch ; 
“ She herself was innocent, and I might 
not have forgotten to relinquish it to 
her, at my death,” and sat looking at 
it. 

“ Shall I recall something to you, 
worthy madame ? ” said Rigaud. “ The 
little paper was in this house, on the 
night when our friend the prisoner — 
jail-comrade of my soul — came home 
from foreign countries. Shall I recall 
yet something more to you ? The little 
singing-bird that never was fledged was 
long kept in a cage, by a guardian of 
your appointing, well enough known to 
our old intriguer here. Shall we coax 
our old intriguer to tell us when he saw 
him last? ” 

“I ’ll tell you ! ” cried Affery, un- 
stopping her mouth. “ I dreamed it, 
first of all my dreams. Jeremiah, if 
you come anigh me now, I ’ll scream to 
be heard at St. Paul’s ! The person as 
this man has spoken of was Jeremiah’s 
own twin brother ; and he was here in 
the dead of the night, on the night 
when Arthur come home, and Jeremiah 
with his own hands give him this paper, 
along with I don’t know what more, 
and he took it away in an iron box. — 
Help! Murder! Save me from Jere- 
mi- ah ! ” . 

Mr. Flintwinch had made a run at 
her, but Rigaud had caught him in his 
arms midway. After a moment’s wrestle 
with him, Flintwinch gave up, and put 
his hands in his pockets. 

“ What ! ” cried Rigaud, rallying him 
as he poked and jerked him back with 
his elbows. “ Assault a lady with such 
a genius for dreaming ? Ha, ha, ha ! 
Why she ’ll be a fortune to you as an 
exhibition. All that she dreams comes 
true. Ha, ha, ha ! You ’re so like 
him, Little Flintwinch. So like him, 
as I knew him (when I first spoke Eng- 
lish for him to the host) in the Cabaret 


of the Three Billiard Tables, in the 
little street of the high roofs, by the 
wharf at Antwerp ! Ah, but he was a 
brave boy to drink. Ah, but he was a 
brave boy to smoke ! Ah, but he lived 
in a sweet bachelor - apartment, fur- 
nished, on the fifth floor, above the 
wood and charcoal merchant’s, and the 
dress-makers, and the chair-makers, 
and the maker of tubs, — where I knew 
him too, and where, with his cognac 
and tobacco, he had twelve sleeps a day 
and one fit, until he had a fit too much, 
and ascended to the skies. Ha, ha, 
ha ! What does it matter how I took 
ossession of the papers in his iron 
ox? Perhaps he confided it to my 
hands for you, perhaps it was locked 
and my curiosity was piqued, perhaps I 
suppressed it. Ha, ha, ha ! What 
does it matter, so that I have it safe ? 
We are not particular here ; hey, Flint- 
winch? We are not particular here; 
is it not so, madame ? ” 

Retiring before him with vicious 
counter-jerks of his own elbows, Mr. 
Flintwinch had got back into his corner, 
where he now stood with his hands in 
his pockets, taking breath, and return- 
ing Mrs. Clennam’s stare. “ Ha, ha, 
ha ! But what ’s this? ” cried Rigaud. 
“ It appears as if you don’t know, one 
the other. Permit me, Madame, Clen- 
nam who suppresses, to present Mon- 
sieur Flintwinch who intrigues.” 

Mr. Flintwinch, unpocketing one of 
his hands to scrape his jaw, advanced a 
step or so in that attitude, still returning 
Mrs. Clennam’s look, and thus ad- 
dressed her : — 

“ Now, I know what you mean by 
opening your eyes so wide at me, but 
you need n’t take the trouble, because I 
don’t care for it. I ’ve been telling you 
for how many years, that you’re one 
of the most opinionated and obstinate 
of women. That ’s what you are. You 
call yourself humble and sinful, but you 
are the most Bumptious of your sex. 
That ’s what you are. I have told you, 
over and over again when we have had 
a tiff, that you wanted to make every- 
thing go down before you, but I would 
n’t go down before you, — that you 
wanted to swallow up everybody alive, 
but I would n’t be swallowed up alive. 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


4 55 


Why didn’t you destroy the paper 
when you first laid hands upon it ? I 
advised } r ou to ; but no, it ’s not your 
way to take advice. You must keep it, 
forsooth. Perhaps you may carry it out 
at some other time, forsooth. As if I 
did n’t know better than that ! I think 
I see your pride carrying it out, with a 
chance of being suspected of having 
kept it by you. But that ’s the way 
you cheat yourself. Just as you cheat 
yourself into making out, that you 
did n’t do all this business because you 
were a rigorous woman, all slight, and 
spite, and power, and unforgivingness, 
but because you were a servant and a 
minister, and were appointed to do it. 
Who are you, that you should be ap- 
pointed to do it? That may be your 
religion, but it ’s my gammon. And to 
tell you all the truth while I am about 
it,” said Mr. Flintwinch, crossing his 
arms, and becoming the express image 
of irascible doggedness, “ I have been 
rasped, — rasped these forty years, — 
by your taking such high ground even 
with me, who knows better ; the effect 
of it being coolly to put me on low 
ground. I admire you very much ; you 
are a woman of strong head and great 
talent ; but the strongest head, and the 
greatest talent, can’t rasp a man for 
forty years without making him sore. 
So I don’t care for your present eyes. 
Now, I am coming to the paper, and 
mark what I say. You put it away 
somewhere, and you keep your own 
counsel where. You ’re an active wo- 
man at that time, and if you want to 
get that paper, you can get it. But 
mark ! There comes a time when you 
are struck into what you are now, and 
then if you want to get that paper, you 
can’t get it. So it lies, long years, in 
its hiding-place. At last, when we are 
expecting Arthur home every day, and 
when any day may bring him home, 
and it ’s impossible to say what rum- 
maging he may make about the house, 
I recommend you five thousand times, 
if you can’t get at it, to let me get at it, 
that it may be put in the fire. But no, 
— no one" but you know's where it is, 
and that’s power; and, call yourself 
whatever humble names you will, I call 
you a female Lucifer in appetite for 


power ! On a Sunday night, Arthur 
comes home. He has not been in this 
room ten minutes, when he speaks of 
his father’s watch. You know very 
well that the Do Not Forget, at the 
time when his father sent that watch to 
you, could only mean, the rest of the 
story being then all dead and over, Do 
Not Forget the suppression. Make 
restitution ! Arthur’s ways have fright- 
ened you a bit, and the paper shall be 
burnt after all. So, before that jump- 
ing jade and Jezebel,” Mr. Flintwinch 
grinned at his wife, “ has got you into 
bed, you at last tell me where you have 
put the paper, among the old ledgers in 
the cellars, where Arthur himself went 
prowling the very next morning. But, 
it ’s not to be burnt on a Sunday night. 
No ; you are strict, you are ; we must 
wait over twelve o’clock, and get into 
Monday. Now, all this is a swallow- 
ing of me up alive that rasps me ; so, 
feeling a little out of temper, and not 
being as strict as yourself, I take a look 
at the document before twelve o’clock, 
to refresh my memory as to its appear- 
ance, — fold up one of the many yellow 
old papers in the cellars like it, — and 
afterwards, when we have got into Mon- 
day morning, and I have, by the light 
of your lamp, to walk from you, lying 
on that bed, to this grate, make a little 
exchange like the conjurer, and bum 
accordingly. My brother Ephraim, the 
lunatic-keeper (I wish he had had him- 
self to keep in a strait-waistcoat), had 
had many jobs since the close of the 
long job he got from you, but had 
not done well. His wife died (not that 
that was much ; mine might have died 
instead, and welcome), he speculated 
unsuccessfully in lunatics, he got into 
difficulty about over-roasting a patient 
to bring him to reason, and he got into 
debt. He was going out of the way, on 
what he had been able to scrape up, 
and a trifle from me. He was here that 
early Monday morning, waiting for the 
tide; in short, he was going to Ant- 
werp, where (I am afraid you ’ll be 
shocked at my saying, And be damned 
to him ! ) he made the acquaintance of 
this gentleman. He had come a long 
way, and, I thought then, was only 
sleepy ; but, I suppose now, was drunk. 


45 $ 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


When Arthur’s mother had been under 
the care of him and his wife, she had 
been always writing, incessantly writing, 
— mostly letters of confession to you, 
and prayers for forgiveness. My broth- 
er had handed, from time to time, lots 
of these sheets to me. I thought I 
might as well keep them to myself, as 
have them swallowed up alive too ; so I 
kept them in a box, looking them over 
when I felt in the humor. Convinced 
that it was advisable to get the paper 
out of the place, with Arthur coming 
about it, I put it into this same box, 
and I locked the whole up with two 
locks, and I trusted it to my brother to 
take away and keep, till I should write 
about it. I did write about it, and 
never got an answer. I did n’t know 
what to make of it, till this gentleman 
favored us with his first visit. Of course, 
I began to suspect how it was, then ; 
and I don’t want his word for it now to 
understand how he gets his knowledge 
from my papers, and your paper, and 
my brother’s cognac and tobacco talk 
(I wish he ’d had to gag himself). Now, 
I have only one thing more to say, you 
hammer-headed woman, and that is, 
that I have n’t altogether made up my 
mind whether I might, or might not, 
have ever given you any trouble about 
the codicil. I think not ; and that I 
should have been quite satisfied with 
knowing I had got the better of you, 
and that I held the power over you. 
In the present state of circumstances, I 
have no more explanation to give you 
till this time to-morrow night. So you 
may as well,” said Mr. Flintwinch, ter- 
minating his oration with a screw, 
“ keep your eyes open at somebody 
else, for it ’s no use keeping ’em open 
at me.” 

She slowly withdrew them when he 
had ceased, and dropped her forehead 
on her hand. Her other hand pressed 
hard upon the table, and again the curi- 
ous stir was observable in her, as if she 
were going to rise. 

“ This box can never bring, elsewhere, 
the price it will bring here. This knowl- 
edge can never be of the same profit to 
you, sold to any other person, as sold to 
me. But I have not the present means 
of raising the sum you have demanded. 


I have not prospered. What will you 
take now, and what at another time, 
and how am I to be assured of your si- 
lence ? ” 

“My angel,” replied Rigaud, “ I have 
said what I will take, and time presses. 
Before coming here, I placed copies of 
the most important of these papers in 
another hand. Put off the time till the 
Marshalsea gate shall be shut for the 
night, and it will be too late to treat. 
The prisoner will have read them.” 

She put her two hands to her head 
again, uttered a loud exclamation, and 
started to her feet. She staggered for 
a moment, as if she would have fallen ; 
then stood firm. 

“ Say what you megn. Say what you 
mean, man ! ” 

Before her ghostly figure, so long un- 
used to its erect attitude, and so stiff- 
ened in it, Rigaud fell back and dropped 
his voice. It was, to all the three, al- 
most as if a dead woman had risen. 

“ Miss Dorrit,” answered Rigaud, 
“ the little niece of Monsieur Frederick, 
whom I have known across the water, 
is attached to the prisoner. Miss Dor- 
rit, little niece of Monsieur Frederick, 
watches at this moment over the pris- 
oner, who is ill. For her, I with my 
own hands left a packet at the prison, 
on my way here, with a letter of instruc- 
tions, ‘ for his sake ,’ — she will do any- 
thing for his sake, — to keep it without 
breaking the seal, in case of its being 
reclaimed before the hour of shutting up 
to-night, — if it should not be reclaimed 
before the ringing of the prison bell, to 
give it to him ; and it encloses a second 
copy for herself, which he must give to 
her. What ! I don’t trust myself among 
you, now we have got so far, without 
giving my secret a second life. And as 
to its not bringing me, elsewhere, the 
price it will bring here, ,ay then, madame, 
have you limited and settled the price 
the little niece will give, — for his sake, 
— to hush it up? Once more I say, 
time presses! The packet not reclaimed 
before the ringing of the bell to-night, 
you cannot buy. I sell, then, to the 
little girl ! ” 

Once more the stir and struggle in 
her, and she ran to a closet, tore the 
door open, took down a hood or shawl, 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


457 


and wrapped it over her head. Affery, 
who had watched her in terror, darted 
to her in the middle of the room, caught 
hold of her dress, and went on her knees 
to her. 

“ Don’t, don’t, don’t ! What are you 
doing? Where are you going ? You ’re 
a fearful woman, but I don’t bear you 
no ill-will. I can do poor Arthur no 
good now, that I see ; and you need n’t 
be afraid of me. I ’ll keep your secret. 
Don’t go out, you’ll fall dead in the 
street. Only promise me, that, if it ’s 
the poor thing that ’s kept here secretly, 
ou ’ll let me take charge of her and be 
er nurse. Only promise me that, and 
never be afi-aid of me.” 

Mrs. Clennam stood still for an in- 
stant, at the height of her rapid haste, 
saying in stern amazement, — 

“ Kept here? She has been dead a 
score of years and more. Ask Flint- 
winch, — ask him. They can both tell 
you that she died when Arthur went 
abroad.” 

“ So much the worse,” said Affery, 
with a shiver, “ for she haunts the house, 
then. Who else rustles about it, mak- 
ing signals by dropping dust so softly ? 
Who else comes and goes, and marks 
the walls with long crooked touches, 
when we are all abed ? Who else holds 
the door sometimes ? But don’t go out, 
— don’t go out ! Mistress, you ’ll die 
in the street ! ” 

Her mistress only disengaged her 
dress from the beseeching hands, said 
to Rigaud, “Wait here till I come 
back ! ” and ran out of the room. They 
saw her, from the window, run wildly 
through the courtyard and out at the 
gateway. 

_ For a few moments they stood mo- 
tionless. Affery was the first to move, 
and she, wringing her hands, pursued 
her mistress. Next, Jeremiah Flint- 
winch, slowly backing to the doof, with 
one hand in a pocket and the other rub- 
bing his chin, twisted himself out in 
his reticent way, speechlessly. Rigaud, 
left alone, composed himself upon the 
window-seat of the open window, in the 
old Marseilles- Jail attitude. He laid 
his cigarettes and fire-box ready to his 
hand, and fell to smoking. 

“Whoofl Almost as dull as the in- 


fernal old jail. Warmer- but almost as 
dismal. Wait till she comes back? 
Yes, certainly ; but where is she gone, 
and how long will she be gone? No 
matter ! Rigaud Lagnier Blandois, my 
amiable subject, you will get your money. 
You will enrich yourself. You have 
lived a gentleman ; you will die a gen- 
tleman. . You triumph, my little boy; 
but it is your character to triumph. 
Whoof!” 

In the hour of his triumph, his mus- 
tache went up and his nose came down, 
as he ogled a great beam over his head 
with particular satisfaction. 


CHAPTER XXXI. 

CLOSED. 

The sun had set, and the streets 
were dim in the dusty twilight, when 
the figure so long unused to them hur- 
ried on its way. In the immediate 
neighborhood of the old house, it 
attracted little attention, for there were 
only a few straggling people to notice 
it ; but, ascending from the river, by 
the crooked ways that led to London 
Bridge, and passing into the great 
main road, it became surrounded by 
astonishment. 

Resolute and wild of look, rapid of 
foot, and yet weak and uncertain, con- 
spicuously dressed in its black gar- 
ments and with its hurried head-cov- 
ering, gaunt and of an unearthly pale- 
ness, it pressed forward, taking no more 
heed of the throng than a sleep-walker. 
More remarkable by being so removed 
from the crowd it was among, than if 
it had been lifted on a pedestal to be 
seen, the figure attracted all eyes. 
Saunterers pricked up their attention 
to observe it ; busy people, crossing it, 
slackened their pace and turned their 
heads ; companions, pausing and stand- 
ing aside, whispered one another to 
look at this spectral woman who was 
coming by ; and the sweep of the figure 
as it passed seemed to create a vortex, 
drawing the most idle and most curious 
after it. 

Made giddy by the turbulent irrup- 


458 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


tion of this multitude of staring faces 
into her cell of years, by the confusing 
sensation of being in the air and the 
yet more confusing sensation of being 
afoot, by the unexpected changes in 
half-remembered objects, and the want 
of likeness between the controllable 
pictures her imagination had often 
drawn of the life from which she was 
secluded, and the overwhelming rush 
of the reality, she held her way as if 
she were environed by distracting 
thoughts, rather than by external hu- 
manity and observation. But, having 
crossed the bridge, and gone some 
distance straight onward, she remem- 
bered that she must ask for a direction ; 
and it was only then, when she stopped 
and turned to look about her for a 
promising place of inquiry, that she 
found herself surrounded by an eager 
glare of faces. 

“ Why are you encircling me ? ” she 
asked, trembling. 

None of those who were nearest an- 
swered ; but, from the outer ring, 
there arose a shrill cry of “ ’Cause you 
’re mad ! ” 

“ I am as sane as any one here. I 
want to find the Marshalsea prison.” 

The shrill outer circle again retorted, 
“ Then that ’ud show you was mad if 
nothing else did, ’cause it ’s right oppo- 
site ! ” 

A short, mild, quiet-looking young 
man made his way through to her, as 
a whooping ensued on this reply, and 
said, “ Was it the Marshalsea you 
wanted? I ’m going on duty there. 
Come across with me.” 

She laid her hand upon his arm, and 
he took her over the way; the crowd, 
rather injured by the near prospect of 
losing her, pressing before and behind 
and on either side, and recommending 
an adjournment to Bedlam. After a 
momentary whirl in the outer court- 
yard, the prison door opened, and shut 
upon them. In the lodge, which seemed 
by contrast with the outer noise a place 
of refuge and peace, a yellow lamp was 
already striving with the prison shad- 
ows. 

“ Why, John ! ” said the turnkey, 
who had admitted them. “What is 
it?” 


“ Nothing, father; only this lady not 
knowing her way, and living badgered 
by the boys. Who did you want, 
ma’am ! ” 

“ Miss Dorrit. Is she here ? ” 

The young man became more inter- 
ested. “ Yes, she is here. What might 
your name be? ” 

“ Mrs. Clennam.” 

“ Mr. Clennam’s mother ? ” asked 
the young man. 

She pressed her lips together, and 
hesitated. “Yes. She had better be 
told it is his mother.” 

“You see,” said the young man, 
“ the Marshal’s family living in the coun- 
try at present, the Marshal has given 
Miss Dorrit one of the rooms in his 
house, to use when she likes. Don’t 
you think you had better come up there, 
and let me bring Miss Dorrit ? ” 

She signified her assent, and he un- 
locked a door, and conducted her up 
a side staircase into a dwelling-house 
above. He showed her into a darken- 
ing room, and left her. The room 
looked down into the darkening prison- 
yard, with its inmates strolling here 
and there, leaning out of windows, 
communing as much apart as they 
could with friends who were going away, 
and generally wearing out their impris- 
onment as they best might, that sum- 
mer evening. The air was heavy and 
hot ; the closeness of the place oppres- 
sive ; and from without there arose a 
rush of free sounds, like the jarring 
memory of such things in a headache 
and heartache. She stood at the win- 
dow, bewildered, looking down into 
this prison as it were out of her own 
different prison, when a soft word or 
two of surprise made her start, and 
Little Dorrit stood before her. 

“ Is it possible, Mrs. Clennam, that 
you are so happily recovered as — ” 

Little Dorrit stopped, for there was 
neither happiness nor health in the face 
that turned to her. 

“ This is not recovery ; it is not 
strength; I don’t know what it is.” 
With an agitated wave of her hand, she 
put all that aside. “ You have had a 
packet left with you, which you were 
to give to Arthur if it was not reclaimed 
before this place closed to-night ? ” 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


459 


“Yes.” 

“ I reclaim it.” 

Little Dorrit took it from her bosom, 
and gave it into her hand, which re- 
mained stretched out, after receiving 
it. 

“ Have you any idea of its con- 
tents ? ” 

Frightened by her being there, with 
that new power of movement in her, 
which, as she had said herself, was 
not strength, and which was unreal to 
look upon, as though a picture or a 
statue had been animated, Little I>orrit 
answered, “ No.” 

“ Read them.” 

Little Dorrit took the packet from 
the still outstretched hand and broke 
the seal. Mrs. Clennam then gave her 
the inner packet that was addressed to 
herself, and held the other. The shadow 
of the wall and of the prison buildings, 
which made the room sombre at noon, 
made it too dark to read there, with 
the dusk deepening apace, save in the 
window. In the window, where a little 
of the bright summer evening sky could 
shine upon her, Little Dorrit stood, and 
read. After a broken exclamation or 
so of wonder and of terror, she read in 
silence. When she had finished, she 
looked round, and her old mistress 
bowed herself before her. 

“You know, now, what I have 
done.” 

“ I think so. I am afraid so ; though 
my mind is so hurried, and so sorry, 
and has so much to pity, that it has not 
been able to follow all I have read,” 
said Little Dorrit, tremulously. 

■“ I will restore to you what I have 
withheld from you. Forgive me. Can 
you forgive me?” 

“ I can, and Heaven knows I do ! 
Do not kiss my dress and kneel to me ; 
you are too old to kneel to me ; I for- 
give you freely, without that.” 

“ I have more to ask yet.” 

“ Not in that posture,” said Little 
Dorrit. “ It is unnatural to see your 
gray hair lower than mine. Pray rise ; 
let me help you.” With that she raised 
her up, and stood rather shrinking from 
her, but looking at her earnestly. 

“The great petition that I make to 
you (there is another which grows out 


of it), the great supplication that I ad- 
dress to your merciful and gentle heart, 
is, that you will not disclose this to 
Arthur until I am dead. If you think, 
when you have had time for considera- 
tion, that it can do him any good to 
know it while, I am yet alive, then tell 
him. But you will not think that ; and 
in such case, will you promise me to 
spare me until I am dead ? ” 

“ I am so sorry, and what I have read 
has so confused my thoughts,” returned 
Little Dorrit, “that I can scarcely give 
you a steady answer. If I should be 
quite sure that to be acquainted with it 
will do Mr. Clennam no good — ” 

“I know you are attached to him, 
and will make him the first considera- 
tion. It is right that he should be the 
first consideration. I ask that. But, 
having regarded him, and still finding 
that you may spare me for the little 
time I shall remain on earth, will you 
doit?” 

“I will.” 

“ God bless you !” 

She stood in the shadow so that she 
was only a veiled form to Little Dorrit 
in the light ; but the sound of her 
voice, in saying those three grateful 
words, was at once fervent and broken. 
Broken by emotion as unfamiliar to her 
frozen eyes as action to her frozen 
limbs. 

“You will wonder, perhaps,” she said 
in a stronger tone, “that I can better 
bear to be known to you whom I have 
wronged, than to the son of my enemy 
who wronged me. — For she did wrong 
me ! She not only sinned grievously 
against the Lord, but she wronged me. 
What Arthur’s father was to me, she 
made him. From our marriage day I 
was his dread, and that she made me. 

I was the scourge of both, and that is 
referable to her. You love Arthur, (I 
can see the blush upon your face ; may 
it be the dawn of happier days to both 
of you !) and you will have thought al- 
ready that he is as merciful and kind as 
you, and why do I not trust myself to 
him as soon as to you. Have you not 
thought so?” 

“No thought,” said Little Dorrit, 
“can be quite a stranger to my heart, 
that springs out of the knowledge that 


460 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


Mr. Clennam is always to be relied up- 
on for being kind and generous and 
good.” 

“ I do not doubt it. Yet Arthur is, 
of the whole world, the one person from 
whom I would conceal this, while I am 
in it. I kept over him as a child, in the 
days of his first remembrance, my re- 
straining and correcting hand. I was 
stem with him, knowing that the trans- 
gressions of the parents are visited on 
their offspring, and that there was an 
angry mark upon him at his birth. I 
have sat with him and his father, seeing 
the weakness of his father yearning to 
unbend to him ; and forcing it back, 
that the child might work out his re- 
lease in bondage and hardship. I have 
seen him, with his mother’s face, look- 
ing up at me in awe from his little 
books, and trying to soften me with his 
mother’s ways that hardened me.” 

The shrinking of her auditress stopped 
her for a moment in her flow of words, 
delivered in a retrospective gloomy 
voice. 

“ For his good. Not for the satisfac- 
tion of my injury. What was I, and 
what was the worth of that, before the 
curse of Heaven ! I have seen that 
child grow up ; not to be pious in a 
chosen way (his mother’s offence lay 
too heavy on him for that), but still to 
be just and upright, and to be submis- 
sive to me. He never loved me, as I 
once half hoped he might, — so frail we 
are, and so do the corrupt affections of 
the flesh war with our trusts and tasks ; 
but he always respected me, and or- 
dered himself dutifully to me. He does 
to this hour. With an empty place in 
his heart that he has never known the 
meaning of, he has turned away from 
me, and gone his separate road ; but 
even that he has done considerately and 
with deference. These have been his 
relations towards me. Yours have been 
of a much slighter kind, spread over a 
much shorter time. When you have 
sat at your needle in my room, you have 
been in fear of me, but you have sup- 
posed me to have been doing you a 
kindness ; you are better informed now, 
and know me to have done you an in- 
jury. Your misconstruction and misun- 
derstanding of the cause in which, and 


the motives with which, I have worked 
out this work, is lighter to endure than 
his would be. I would not, for any 
worldly recompense I can imagine, 
have him in a moment, however blind- 
ly, throw me down from the station I 
have held before him all his life, and 
change me altogether into something 
he would cast out of his respect, and 
think detected and exposed. Let him 
do it, if it must be done, when I am not 
here to see it. Let me never feel, while 
I am still alive, that I die before his 
face, and utterly perish aw-ay from him, 
like one consumed by lightning and 
swallowed by an earthquake.” 

Her pride was very strong in her, the 
pain of it and of her old passions w'as 
very sharp with her, when she thus ex- 
pressed herself. Not less so, when she 
added, — 

“ Even now, I see you shrink from 
me, as if I had been cruel.” 

Little Dorrit could not gainsay it. 
She tried not to show it, but she recoiled 
with dread from the state of mind that 
had burnt so fiercely and lasted so 
long. It presented itself to her, with 
no sophistry upon it, in its own plain 
nature. 

“ I have done,” said Mrs. Clennam, 
“ what it was given to me to do. I have 
set myself against evil ; not against 
good. I have been an instrument 
of severity against sin. Have not 
mere sinners like myself been commis- 
sioned to lay it low in all time ? ” 

“ In all time?” repeated Little Dor- 
rit. 

“ Even if my own wrong had pre- 
vailed with me, and my own ven- 
geance had moved me, could I have 
found no justification ? None in the 
old days when the innocent perished 
wfith the guilty, a thousand to one? 
When the wrath of the hater of the 
unrighteous was not slaked even in 
blood, and yet found favor ? ” 

“ O Mrs. Clennam, Mrs. Clennam,” 
said Little Dorrit, “ angry feelings and 
unforgiving deeds are no comfort and no 
guide to you and me. My life has been 
passed in this poor prison, and my teach- 
ing has been very defective ; but let me 
implore you to remember later and bet- 
ter days. Be guided only by the healer 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


461 


of the sick, the raiser of the dead, the 
friend of all who were afflicted and for- 
lorn, the patient Master who shed tears 
of compassion for our infirmities. We 
cannot but be right if we put all the rest 
away, and do everything in remem- 
brance of Him. There is no ven- 
geance and no infliction of suffering in 
His life, I am sure. There can be no 
confusion in following Him, and seek- 
ing for no other footsteps, I am cer- 
tain ! ” 

In the softened light of the window, 
looking from the scene of her early trials 
to the shining sky, she was not in 
stronger opposition to the black figure 
in the shade than the life and doctrine 
on which she rested were to that fig- 
ure’s history. It bent its head low 
again, and said not a word. It re- 
mained thus, until the first warning 
bell began to ring. 

“ Hark ! ” cried Mrs. Clennam, start- 
ing, “ I said I had another petition. It 
is one that does not admit of delay. The 
man who brought you this packet and 
possesses these proofs is now waiting 
at my house to be bought off. I can 
keep this from Arthur only by buying 
him off. He asks a large sum ; more 
than I can get together to pay him, 
without having time. He refuses to 
make any abatement, because his threat 
is, that if he fails with me he will come 
to you. Will you return with me and 
show him that you already know it? 
Will you return with me and try to 
prevail with him ? Will you come and 
help me with him ? Do not refuse 
what I ask in Arthur’s name, though 
I dare not ask it for Arthur’s sake ! ” 

Little Dorrit yielded willingly. She 
glided away into the prison for a few 
moments, returned, and said she was 
ready to go. They went out by an- 
other staircase, avoiding the lodge ; 
and, coming into the front courtyard, 
now all quiet and deserted, gained the 
street. 

It was one of those summer evenings 
when there is no greater darkness than 
a long twilight. The vista of street and 
bridge was plain to see, and the sky was 
serene and beautiful. People stood and 
sat at their doors, playing with children 
and enjoying the evening ; numbers 


were walking for air ; the worry of the 
day had almost worried itself out, and 
few but themselves were hurried. As 
they crossed the bridge, the clear stee- 
ples of the many churches looked as if 
they had advanced out of the murk 
that usually enshrouded them and 
come much nearer. The smoke that 
rose into the sky had lost its dingy 
hue and taken a brightness upon it. 
The beauties of the sunset had not 
faded from the long light films of 
cloud that lay at peace in the horizon. 
From a radiant centre over the whole 
length and breadth of the tranquil firm- 
ament, great shoots of light streamed 
among the early stars, like signs of 
the blessed later covenant of peace and 
hope that changed the crown of thorns 
into a glory. 

Less remarkable, now that she was 
not alone and it was darker, Mrs. Clen- 
nam hurried on at Little Dorrit’s side, 
unmolested. They left the great thor- 
oughfare at the turning by which she 
had entered it, and wound their way 
down among the silent, empty cross- 
streets. Their feet were at the gateway 
when there was a sudden noise like 
thunder. 

“ What was that ! Let us make 
haste in,” cried Mrs. Clennam. 

They were in the gateway. Little 
Dorrit, with a piercing cry, held her 
back. 

In one swift instant, the old house 
was before them, with the man lying 
smoking in the window ; another thun- 
dering sound, and it heaved, surged 
outward, opened asunder in fifty places, 
collapsed, and fell. Deafened by the 
noise, stifled, choked, and blinded by 
the dust, they hid their faces and stood 
rooted to the spot. The dust storm, 
driving between them and the placid 
sky, parted for a moment and showed 
them the stars. As they looked up, 
wildly crying for help, the great pile of 
chimneys which was then alone left 
standing, like a tower in a whirlwind, 
rocked, broke, and hailed itself down 
upon the heap of ruin, as if every tum- 
bling fragment were intent on burying 
the crushed wretch deeper. 

So blackened by the flying particles 
of rubbish as to be unrecognizable, they 


462 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


ran back from the gateway into the 
street, crying and shrieking. There 
Mrs. Clennam dropped upon the stones; 
and she never from that hour moved so 
much as a finger again, or had the pow- 
er to speak one word. For upwards of 
three years she reclined in her wheeled 
chair, looking attentively at those about 
her, and appearing to understand what 
they said ; but the rigid silence she 
had so long held was evermore en- 
forced upon her, and, except that she 
could move her eyes and faintly express 
a negative and affirmative with her 
head, she lived and died a statue. 

Affery had been looking for them at 
the prison, and had caught sight of 
them at a distance on the bridge. She 
came up to receive her old mistress iu 
her arms, to help to carry her into a 
neighboring house, and to be faithful to 
her. The mystery of the noises was 
out now; Affery, like greater people, 
had always been right in her facts, and 
always wrong in the theories she de- 
duced from them. 

When the storm of dust had cleared 
away and the summer night was calm 
again, numbers of people choked up 
every avenue of access, and parties of 
diggers were formed to relieve one 
another in digging among the ruins. 
There had been a hundred people in 
the house at the time of its fall, there 
had been fifty, there had been fifteen, 
there had been two. Rumor finally 
settled the number at two, — the for- 
eigner and Mr. Flintwinch. 

The diggers dug all through the short 
night by flaring pipes of gas, and on a 
level with the early sun, and deeper and 
deeper below it as it rose into its zenith, 
and aslant of it as it declined, and on 
a level with it again as it departed. 
Sturdy digging, and shovelling, and 
carrying away, in carts, barrows, and 
baskets, went on without intermission, 
by night and day ; but it was night for 
the second time when they found the 
dirty heap of rubbish that had been the 
foreigner before his head had been 
shivered to atoms, like so much glass, 
by the great beam that lay upon him, 
crushing him. 

Still, they had not come upon Flint- 
winch yet ; so the sturdy digging, and 


shovelling, and carrying away, went on 
without intermission by night and by 
day. It got about that the old house 
had had famous cellarage (which indeed 
was true), and that Flintwinch had 
been in a cellar at the moment, or had 
had time to escape into one, and that 
he was safe under its strong arch, and 
even that he had been heard to cry, in 
hollow, subterranean, suffocated notes, 
“ Here I am 1 ” At the opposite ex- 
tremity of the town it was even known 
that the excavators had been able to 
open a communication with him through 
a pipe, and that he had received both 
soup and brandy by that channel, and 
that he had said with admirable forti- 
tude that he was All right, my lads, 
with the exception of his collar-bone. 
But the digging and shovelling and 
carrying away went on without intermis- 
sion, until the ruins were all dug out, 
and the cellars opened to the light ; 
and still no Flintwinch, living or dead, 
all right, or all wrong, had been turned 
up by pick or spade. 

It began, then, to be perceived that 
Flintwinch had not been there at the 
time of the fall; and it began then to 
be perceived that he had been rather 
busy elsewhere, converting securities 
into as much money as could be got for 
them on the shortest notice, and turn- 
ing to his own exclusive account his 
authority to act for the firm. Affery, 
remembering that the clever one had 
said he would explain himself further 
in four-and- twenty hours’ time, deter- 
mined for her part that his taking him- 
self off within that period with all he 
could get was the final satisfactory sum 
and substance of his promised explana- 
tion ; but she held her peace, devoutly 
thankful to be quit of him. As it 
seemed reasonable to conclude that a 
man who had never been buried could 
not be unburied, the diggers gave him 
up when their task was done, and did 
not dig down for him into the depths 
of the earth. 

This was taken in ill part by a great 
many people, who persisted in believing 
that Flintwinch was lying somewhere 
among the London geological forma- 
tions. Nor was their belief much sha- 
ken by repeated intelligence which came 





WW /y 


CASBY AND PANCKS 









LITTLE DORRIT. 


463 


over in course of time, that an old man, 
who wore the tie of his neckcloth under 
one ear, and who was very well known 
to be an Englishman, consorted with 
the Dutchmen on the quaint banks of 
the canals at the Hague, and in the 
drinking-shops of Amsterdam, under 
the style and designation of Mynheer 
von Flyntevynge. 


CHAPTER XXXII. 

GOING. 

Arthur continuing to lie very ill 
in the Marshalsea, and Mr. Rugg de- 
scrying no break in the legal sky afford- 
ing a hope of his enlargement, Mr. 
Pancks suffered desperately from self- 
reproaches. If it had not been for 
those infallible figures which proved 
that Arthur, instead of pining in im- 
prisonment, ought to be promenading 
111 a carriage and pair, and that Mr. 
Pancks, instead of being restricted to 
his clerkly wages, ought to have from 
three to five thousand pounds of his 
own, at his immediate disposal, that un- 
happy arithmetician would probably have 
taken to his bed, and there have made 
one of the many obscure persons who 
turned their faces to the wall and died, 
as a last sacrifice to the late Mr. Mer- 
dle’s greatness. Solely supported by 
his unimpugnable calculations, Mr. 
Pancks led an unhappy and restless 
life ; constantly carrying his figures 
about with him in his hat, and not only 
going over them himself on every pos- 
sible occasion, but entreating every 
human being he could lay hold of to 
go over them with him, and observe 
what a clear case it was. Down in 
Bleeding Heart Yard there was scarce- 
ly an inhabitant of any note to whom 
Mr. Pancks had not imparted his dem- 
onstration, and, as figures are catch- 
ing, a kind of ciphering measles broke 
out in that locality, under the influence 
of which the whole Yard was light- 
headed. 

The more restless Mr. Pancks grew 
in his mind, the more impatient he be- 
came of the Patriarch. In* their later 


conferences, his snorting had assumed 
an irritable sound which boded the 
Patriarch no good ; likewise, Mr. 
Pancks had on several occasions looked 
harder at the Patriarchal bumps than 
was quite reconcilable with the fact of 
his not being a painter, or a peruke- 
maker, in search of the living model. 

However, he had steamed in and 
out of his little back Dock, according 
as he was wanted or not wanted in 
the Patriarchal presence, and business 
had gone on in its customary course. 
Bleeding Heart Yard had been har- 
rowed by Mr. Pancks, and cropped by 
Mr. Casby, at the regular seasons ; Mr. 
Pancks had taken all the drudgery and 
all the dirt of the business as his share ; 
Mr. Casby had taken all the profits, all 
the ethereal vapor, and all the moon- 
shine, as his share ; and, in the form of 
words which that benevolent beamer 
generally employed on Saturday even- 
ings, when he twirled his fat thumbs 
after striking the week’s balance, 
“everything had been satisfactory to 
all parlies — all parties — satisfactory, 
sir, to all parties.” 

The Dock of the Steam-Tug, Pancks, 
had a leaden roof, which, frying in the 
very hot sunshine, may have heated the 
vessel. Be that as it may, one glowing 
Saturday evening, on being hailed by 
the lumbering bottle-green ship, the 
Tug instantly came working out of the 
Dock in a highly heated condition. 

“ Mr. Pancks,” was the Patriarchal 
remark, “ you have been remiss, you 
have been remiss, sir.” 

“ What do you mean by that ? ” was 
the short rejoinder. 

The Patriarchal state, always a state 
of calmness and composure, was so 
particularly serene that evening as to 
be provoking. Everybody else within 
the bills of mortality was hot ; but the 
Patriarch was perfectly cool. Every- 
body was thirsty, and the Patriarch was 
drinking. There was a fragrance of 
limes or lemons about him ; and he 
had made a drink of golden sherry, 
which shone in a large tumbler, as if 
he were drinking the evening sunshine. 
This was bad, but not the worst. The 
worst was, that with his big blue eyes, 
and his polished head, and his long 


464 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


white hair, and his bottle-green legs 
stretched out before him, terminating 
in his easy shoes easily crossed at the 
instep, he had a radiant appearance of 
having in his extensive benevolence 
made the drink for the human spe- 
cies, while he himself wanted noth- 
ing but his own milk of human kind- 
ness. 

Wherefore, Mr. Pancks said, “ What 
do you mean by that?” and put his 
hair up with both hands, in a highly 
portentous manner. 

“ I mean, Mr. Pancks, that you must 
be sharper with the people, sharper 
with the people, much sharper with the 
people, sir. You don’t squeeze them. 
You don’t squeeze them. Your receipts 
are not up to the mark. You must 
squeeze them, sir, or our connection 
will not' continue tq.be as satisfactory as 
1 could wish it to be, to all parties. All 
parties ” 

*• Don't I squeeze ’em?” retorted Mr. 
Pancks. “ What else am I made for? ” 

“ You are made for nothing else, Mr. 
Pancks. You are made to do your 
duty, but you don’t do your duty. You 
are paid to squeeze, and you must 
squeeze to pay.” The Patriarch so 
much surprised himself by this brilliant 
turn, after Doctor Johnson, which he 
had not in the least expected or in- 
tended, that he laughed aloud ; and 
repeated with great satisfaction, as he 
twirled his thumbs and nodded at his 
youthful portrait, “ Paid to squeeze, sir, 
and must squeeze to pay.” 

“Oh!” said Pancks. “Anything 
more? *' 

‘ Yes, sir, yes, sir. Something more. 
You will please, Mr. Pancks, to squeeze 
the Yard again, the first thing on Mon- 
day morning ” 

“Oh?” said Pancks. “Ain’t that 
too soon ? I squeezed it dry to-day.” 

“ Nonsense, sir. Not near the mark, 
not near the mark.” 

“ Oh ! ” said Pancks, watching him 
as he benevolently gulped down a good 
draught of his mixture. “ Anything 
more ? ” 

“ Yes, sir. yes, sir, something more. 

I am not ar all pleased, Mr. Pancks, 
with my daughter ; not at all pleased. 
Besides calling much too often to in- 


quire for Mrs. Clennam, Mrs. Clen- 
nam, who is not just now in circum- 
stances that are by any means calcu- 
lated to — to be satisfactory to all parties, 
she goes, Mr. Pancks, unless I am 
much deceived, to inquire for Mr. Clen- 
nam in jail. In jail.” 

“ He ’s laid up, you know,” said 
Pancks. “ Perhaps it ’s kind.” 

“ Pooh, pooh, Mr. Pancks. She has 
nothing to do with that, nothing to do 
with that. I can’t allow it. Let him 
pay his debts and come out, come out ; 
pay his debts, and come out.” 

Although Mr. Pancks’s hair was 
standing up like strong wire, he gave it 
another double-handed impulse in the 
perpendicular direction, and smiled at 
his proprietor in a most hideous man- 
ner. 

“ You will please to mention to my 
daughter, Mr. Pancks, that I can’t al- 
low it, can’t allow it,” said the Patri- 
arch, blandly. 

“ Oh ! ” said Pancks. “ You could n’t 
mention it yourself? ” 

“ No, sir, no ; you are paid to men- 
tion it,” the blundering old booby could 
not resist the temptation of trying it 
again, “and you must mention it to 
pay, mention it to pay.” 

“Oh!” said Pancks. “Anything 
more ? ” 

“Yes, sir. It appears to me, Mr. 
Pancks, that you yourself are too often 
and too much in that direction, that 
direction. I recommend you, Mr. 
Pancks, to dismiss from your attention 
both your own losses and other people’s 
losses, and to mind your business, mind 
your business.” 

Mr. Pancks acknowledged this rec- 
ommendation with such an extraordi- 
narily abrupt, short, and loud utterauce 
of the monosyllable “ Oh ! ” that even 
the unwieldy Patriarch moved his blue 
eyes in something of a hurry to look at 
him. Mr. Pancks, with a sniff of cor- 
responding intensity, then added, “ Any- 
thing more ? ” 

“Not at present, sir, not at present. 

I am going,” said the Patriarch, finish- 
ing his mixture, and rising with an 
amiable air, “to take a little stroll, 
little stroll. Perhaps I shall find you 
here when I come back. If not, sir, 


LITTLE 

duty, duty ; squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, 
on Monday ; squeeze on Monday ! ” 

Mr. Pancks, after another stiffening 
of his hair, looked on at the Patriarchal 
assumption of the broad-brimmed hat, 
with a momentary appearance of inde- 
cision contending with a sense of injury. 
He was also hotter than at first, and 
breathed harder. But he suffered Mr. 
Casby to go out, without offering any 
further remark, and then took a peep 
at him over the little green window- 
blinds. “ I thought so,” he observed. 

“ I knew where you were bound to. 
Good ! ” He then steamed back to his 
Dock, put it carefully in order, took 
down his hat, looked round the Dock, 
said, “ Good by ! ” and puffed away on 
his own account. He steered straight 
for Mrs. Plornish’s end of Bleeding 
Heart Yard, and arrived there, at the 
top of the steps, hotter than ever. 

At the top of the steps, resisting Mrs. 
Plornish’s invitations to come and sit 
along with father in Happy Cottage, — 
which to his relief were not so numerous 
as they would have been on any other 
night than Saturday, when the connec- 
tion who so gallantly supported the 
business with everything but money 
gave their orders freely, — at the top of 
the steps, Mr. Pancks remained until 
he beheld the Patriarch, who always 
entered the Yard at the other end, 
slowly advancing, beaming; and sur- 
rounded by suitors. Then Mr. Pancks 
descended and bore down upon him, 
with his utmost pressure of steam on. 

The Patriarch, approaching with his 
usual benignity, was surprised to see 
Mr. Pancks, but supposed him to have 
been stimulated to an immediate squeeze, 
instead of postponing that operation 
until Monday. The population of the 
Yard were astonished at the meeting, 
for the two powers had never been seen 
there together, within the memory of 
the oldest Bleeding Heart. But they 
were overcome by unutterable amaze- 
ment, when Mr. Pancks, going close 
up to the most venerable of men, and 
halting in front of the bottle-green 
waistcoat, made a trigger of his right 
thumb and forefinger, applied the same 
to the brim of the broad-brimmed hat, 
and, with singular smartness and pre- 

30 


DORRIT. 465 

cision, shot it off the polished head as 
if it had been a large marble. 

Having taken this little liberty with 
the Patriarchal person, Mr. Pancks 
further astounded and attracted the 
Bleeding Hearts by saying in an audi- 
ble voice, “ Now, you sugary swindler, 
I mean to have it out with you ! ” 

Mr. Pancks and the Patriarch were 
instantly the centre of a press, all eyes 
and ears ; windows were thrown open, 
and doorsteps were thronged. 

“What do you pretend to be?” said 
Mr. Pancks. “ What ’s your moral 
game? What do you go in for? Be- 
nevolence, ain’t it? You benevolent ! ” 
Here Mr. Pancks, apparently without 
' the intention of hitting him, but merely 
to relieve his mind and expend his 
superfluous power in wholesome exer- 
cise, aimed a blow at the bumpy head, 
which the bumpy head ducked to avoid. 
This singular performance was repeated 
to the ever-increasing admiration of 
the spectators, at the end of every suc- 
ceeding article of Mr. Pancks’s ora- 
tion. 

“ I have discharged myself from your 
service,” said Pancks, “that I may tell 
you what you are. You ’re one of a lot 
of impostors that are the worst lot of all 
the lots to be met with. Speaking as a 
sufferer by both, I don’t know that I 
wouldn’t as soon have the Merdle lot 
as your lot. You’re a driver in dis- 
guise, a screwer by deputy, a wringer, 
and squeezer, and shaver by substitute. 
You ’re a philanthropic sneak. You ’re 
a shabby deceiver ! ” 

(The repetition of the performance 
at this point was received with a burst 
of laughter.) 

“ Ask these good people who ’s the 
hard man here. They ’ll tell you 
Pancks, I believe.” 

This was confirmed with cries of 
“ Certainly,” and “ Hear ! ” 

“ But I tell you, good people — Cas- 
by ! This mound of meekness, this 
lump of love, this bottle-green smiler, 
this is your driver ! ” said Pancks. 
“ If you want to see the man who would 
flay you alive, — here he is ! Don’t 
look for him in me, at thirty shillings 
a week, but look for him in Casby, at 
I don’t know how much a year ! ” 


466 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


“ Good ! ” cried several voices. 
“ Hear Mr. Pancks ! ” 

“Hear Mr. Pancks?” cried that 
gentleman (after repeating the popular 
performance), “yes, I should think so! 
It ’s almost time to hear Mr. Pancks. 
Mr. Pancks has come down into the 
Yard to-night, on purpose that you 
should hear him. Pancks is only the 
Works ; but here’s the Winder ! ” 

The audience would have gone over 
to Mr. Pancks, as one man, woman, 
and child, but for the long, gray, silken 
locks, and the broad-brimmed hat. 

“Here’s the Stop,” said Pancks, 
“ that sets the tune to be ground. And 
there is but one tune, and its name 
is Grind, Grind, Grind ! Here ’s the 
Proprietor, and here ’s his Grubber. 
Why, good people, when he comes 
smoothly spinning through the Yard 
to-night, like a slow-going benevolent 
humming-top, and when you come 
about him with your complaints of the 
Grubber, you don’t know what a cheat 
the Proprietor is ? What do you think 
of his showing himself to-night, that I 
may have all the blame on Monday? 
What do you think of his having had 
me over the coals this very evening, 
because I don’t squeeze you enough? 
What do you think of my being, 
at the present moment, under spe- 
cial orders to squeeze you dry on 
Monday? ” 

The reply was given in a murmur of 
“ Shame ! ” and “ Shabby ! ” 

“ Shabby ? ” snorted Pancks. “ Yes, 
I should think so ! The lot that your 
Casby belongs to is the shabbiest of 
all the lots. Setting their Grubbers on, 
at a wretched pittance, to do what 
they ’re ashamed and afraid to do and 
pretend not to do, but what they will 
have done, or give a man no rest ! Im- 
posing on you to give their Grubbers 
nothing but blame, and to give them 
nothing but credit ! Why, the worst- 
looking cheat in all this town who gets 
the value of eighteen-pence under false 
pretences, ain’t half such a cheat as this 
sign-post of The Casby’s Head here ! ” 
Cries of “That ’s true ! ” and “ No 
more he ain’t ! ” 

“ And see what you get of these fel- 
lows, besides,” said Pancks. “ See 


what more you get of these precious 
humming-tops, revolving among you 
with such smoothness that you ’ve no 
idea of the pattern painted on ’em, or 
the little window in ’em ! I wish to 
call your attention to myself for a mo- 
ment. I ain’t an agreeable style of 
chap, I know that very well.” 

The auditory were divided on this 
point : its more uncompromising mem- 
bers, crying, “No you are not,” and its 
politer materials, “Yes, you are.” 

“ I am, in general,” said Mr. Pancks, 
“a dry, uncomfortable, dreary Plodder 
and Grubber. That ’s your humble 
servant. There ’s his full-length por- 
trait, painted by himself and presented 
to you, warranted a likeness ! But 
what ’s a man to be, w'ith such a man 
as this for his Proprietor? What can 
be expected of him ? Did anybody ever 
find boiled mutton and caper-sauce 
growing in a cocoa-nut?” 

None of the Bleeding Hearts ever 
had, it was clear from the alacrity of 
their response. 

“ Well,” said Mr. Pancks, “ and nei- 
ther will you find in Grubbers like my- 
self, under Proprietors like this, pleas- 
ant qualities. I ’ve been a Grubber 
from a boy. What has my life been? 
Fag and grind, fag and grind, turn 
the w'heel, turn the wheel ! I haven’t 
been agreeable to myself, and I haven’t 
been likely to be agreeable to anybody 
else. If I was a shilling a week less 
useful in ten years’ time, this impostor 
would give me a shilling a week less ; 
if as useful a man could be got at six- 
pence cheaper, he would be taken in 
my place at sixpence cheaper. Bargain 
and sale, bless you ! Fixed principles ! 
It is a mighty fine sign-post, is The 
Casby’s Head,” said Mr. Pancks, sur- 
veying it with anything rather than ad- 
miration ; “ but the real name of the 
House is The Sham’s Arms. Its motto 
is, Keep the Grubber always at it. Is 
any gentleman present,” said Mr. 
Pancks, breaking off and looking round, 
“acquainted with the English Gram- 
mar ? ” 

Bleeding Heart Yard was- shy of 
claiming that acquaintance. 

“ It ’s no matter,” said Mr. Pancks. 

“ I merely wish to remark that the task 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


467 


this Proprietor has set me has been 
never to leave off conjugating the Im- 
perative Mood Present Tense of the 
verb To keep always at it. Keep thou 
always at it. Let him keep always at 
it. Keep we or do we keep always at 
it. Keep ye or do ye or you keep al- 
ways at it. Let them keep always at it. 
Here is your benevolent Patriarch of a 
Casby, and there is his golden rule. 
He is uncommonly improving to look at, 
and I am not at all so. He is as sweet 
as honey, and I am as dull as ditch- 
water. He provides the pitch, and I 
handle it, and it sticks to me. Now,” 
said Mr. Pancks, closing upon his late 
Proprietor again, from whom he had 
withdrawn a little for the better dis- 
play of him to the Yard; “as I am not 
accustomed to speak in public, and as I 
have made a rather lengthy speech, all 
circumstances considered, I shall bring 
my observations to a close by request- 
ing you to get out of this.” 

The Last of the Patriarchs had been 
so seized by assault, and required so 
much room to catch an idea in, and so 
much more room to turn it in, that he 
had not a word to offer in reply. He 
appeared to be meditating some Patri- 
archal way out of his delicate position, 
when Mr. Pancks, once more suddenly 
applying the trigger to his hat, shot it 
off again with his former dexterity. On 
the preceding occasion, one or two of 
the Bleeding- Heart- Yardei's had obse- 
quiously picked it up and handed it to 
its owner ; but Mr. Pancks had now 
so far impressed his audience, that the 
Patriarch had to turn and stoop for it 
himself. 

Quick as lightning, Mr. Pancks, who, 
for some moments, had had his right 
hand in his coat-pocket, whipped out a 
pair of shears, swooped upon the Patri- 
arch behind, and snipped off short the 
sacred locks that flowed upon his shoul- 
ders. In a paroxysm of animosity and 
rapidity, Mr. Pancks then caught the 
broad-brimmed hat out of the astounded 
Patriarch’s hand, cut it down into a 
mere stewpan, and fixed it on the Pa- 
triarch’s head. 

Before the frightful results of this 
desperate action, Mr. Pancks himself 
recoiled in consternation. A bare- 


polled, goggle-eyed, big-headed, lum- 
bering personage stood staring at him, 
not in the least impressive, not in the 
least venerable, who seemed to have 
started out of the earth to ask what was 
become of Casby. After staring at this 
phantom in return, in silent awe, Mr. 
Pancks threw down his shears, and fled 
for a place of hiding, where he might 
lie sheltered from the consequences of 
his crime. Mr. Pancks deemed it pru- 
dent to use all possible despatch in 
making off, though he was pursued by 
nothing but the sound of laughter in 
Bleeding Heart Yard, rippling through 
the air, and making it ring again. 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 

GOING ! 

The changes of a fevered room are 
slow and fluctuating ; but the changes 
of the fevered world are rapid and irrev- 
ocable. 

It was Little Dorrit’s lot to wait upon 
both kinds of change. The Marshal- 
sea walls, during a portion of every day, 
again embraced her in their shadows as 
their child, while she thought for Clen- 
nam, worked for him, watched him, and 
only left him still to devote her utmost 
love and care to him. Her part in the 
life outside the gate urged its pressing 
claims upon her, too, and her patience 
untiringly responded to them. Here was 
Fanny, proud, fitful, whimsical, further 
advanced in that disqualified state for 
going into society which had so much 
fretted her on the evening of the tor- 
toise-shell knife, resolved always to 
want comfort, resolved not to be com- 
forted, resolved to be deeply wronged, 
and resolved that nobody should have 
the audacity to think her so. Here 
was her brother, a weak, proud, tipsy, 
young old man, shaking from head to 
foot, talking as indistinctly as if some 
of the money he plumed himself upon 
had got into his mouth and couldn’t be 
got out, unable to walk alone in any act 
of his life, and patronizing the sister 
whom he selfishly loved, (he always had 
that negative merit, ill-starred and ill- 


4 63 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


launched Tip ! ) because he suffered 
her to lead him. Here was Mrs. Mer- 
dle in gauzy mourning — the original 
cap whereof had possibly been rent to 
pieces in a fit of grief, but had certainly 
yielded to a highly becoming article 
from the Parisian market — warring 
with Fanny foot to foot, and breasting 
her with her desolate bosom every hour 
in the day. Here was poor Mr. Spark- 
ler, not knowing how to keep the peace 
between them, but humbly inclining to 
the opinion that they could do no bet- 
ter than agree that they were both re- 
markably fine women, and that there 
was no nonsense about either of them, — 
for which gentle recommendation they 
united in falling upon him frightfully. 
Then, too, here was Mrs. General, 
got home from foreign parts, sending a 
Prune and a Prism by post every other 
day, demanding a r.ew Testimonial by 
way of recommendation to some vacant 
appointment or other. Of which re- 
markable gentlewoman it may be finally 
observed, that there surely never was 
a gentlewoman of whose transcendent 
fitness for any vacant appointment on 
the face of this earth, so many people 
were (as the warmth of her Testimonials 
evinced) so perfectly satisfied, — or who 
was so very unfortunate in having a 
large circle of ardent and distinguished 
admirers, who never themselves hap- 
pened to want her, in any capacity. 

On the first crash of the eminent Mr. 
Merdle’s decease, many important per- 
sons had been unable to determine 
whether they should cut Mrs. Merdle, 
or comfort her. As it seemed, how- 
ever, essential to the strength of their 
own case that they should admit her to 
have been cruelly deceived, they gra- 
ciously made the admission, and con- 
tinued to know her. It followed that 
Mrs. Merdle, as a woman of fashion 
and good breeding, who had been sacri- 
ficed to the wiles of a vulgar barbarian 
(for Mr. Merdle was found out, from 
the crown of his head to the sole of his 
foot, the moment he was found out in 
his pocket), must be actively cham- 
pioned by her order, for her order’s 
sake. She returned this fealty by caus- 
ing it to be understood that she was 
even more incensed against the feloni- 


ous shade of the deceased than anybody 
else was ; thus on the whole she came 
out of her furnace like a wise woman, 
and did exceedingly well. 

Mr. Sparkler’s lordship was fortu- 
nately one of those shelves on which a 
gentleman is considered to be put away 
for life, unless there should be reasons 
for hoisting him up with the Barnacle 
crane to a more lucrative height. That 
patriotic servant accordingly stuck to 
his colors (the Standard of four Quar- 
teriugs), and was a perfect Nelson in 
respect of nailing them to the mast. 
On the profits of his intrepidity, Mrs. 
Sparkler and Mrs. Merdle, inhabiting 
different floors of the genteel little tem- 
ple of inconvenience to which the smell 
of the day before yesterday’s soup and 
coach-horses was as constant as Death 
to man, arrayed themselves to fight it 
out in the lists of Society, sworn rivals. 
And Little Dorrit, seeing all these things 
as they developed themselves, could 
not but wonder, anxiously, into what 
back corner of the genteel establish- 
ment Fanny’s children would be poked 
by and by, and who would take care 
of those unborn little victims. 

Arthur being far too ill to be spoken 
with on subjects of emotion or anxiety, 
and his recovery greatly depending on 
the repose into which his weakness 
could be hushed, Little Dorrit’s sole re- 
liance during this heavy period was on 
Mr. Meagles. He was still abroad ; 
but she had written to him, through 
his daughter, immediately after first 
seeing Arthur in the Marshalsea, and 
since, confiding her uneasiness to him 
on the points on which she was most 
anxious, but especially on one. To that 
one, the continued absence of Mr. Mea- 
gles abroad, instead of his comforting 
presence in the Marshalsea, was refera- 
ble. 

Without disclosing the precise nature 
of the documents that had fallen into 
Rigaud’s hands. Little Dorrit had con- 
fided the general outline of that story to 
Mr. Meagles, to whom she had also re- 
counted his fate. The old cautious hab- 
its of the scales and scoop at once 
showed Mr. Meagles the importance of 
recovering the original papers ; where- 
fore, he wrote back to Little Dorrit, 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


469 


strongly confirming her in the solicitude 
she expressed on that head, and adding 
that he would not come over to England* 
“ without making some attempt to trace 
them out.” 

By this time, Mr. Henry Gowan had 
made up his mind that it would be 
agreeable to him not to kr.ow the Mea- 
gleses. He was so considerate as to 
lay no injunctions on his wife in that 
particular; but he mentioned to Mr. 
Meagles that personally they did not 
appear to him to get on together, and 
that he thought it would be a good 
thing if — politely, and without any 
scene, or anything of that sort — they 
agreed that they were the best fellows 
in the world, but were best apart. 
Poor Mr. Meagles, who *was already 
sensible that he did not advance his 
daughter’s happiness by being constant- 
ly slighted in her presence, said, “ Good, 
Henry ! You are my Pet’s husband ; 
you have displaced me in the course of 
nature ; if you wish it, good ! ” This 
arrangement involved the contingent 
advantage, which perhaps Henry Gow- 
an had not foreseen, that both Mr. and 
Mrs. Meagles were more liberal than 
before to their daughter, when their 
communication was only with her and 
her young child ; and that his high 
spirit found itself better provided with 
money, without being under the degrad- 
ing necessity of knowing whence it 
came. 

Mr. Meagles at such a period natu- 
rally seized an occupation with great ar- 
dor. He knew from his daughter the 
various towns which Rigaud had been 
haunting, and the various hotels at 
which he had been living for some time 
back. The occupation he set himself 
was, to visit these with all discretion 
and speed, and, in the event of finding 
anywhere that he had left a bill unpaid, 
and a box or parcel behind, to pay such 
bill, and bring away such box or par- 
cel. 

With no other attendant than moth- 
er, Mr. Meagles went upon this pil- 
grimage, and encountered a number of 
adventures. Not the least of his difficul- 
ties was, that he never knew what was 
said to him, and that he pursued his in- 
quiries among people who never knew I 


what he said to them. Still, with an 
unshaken confidence that the English 
tongue was somehow the mother-tongue 
of the whole world, only the people 
were too stupid, to know it, Mr. Mea- 
gles harangued innkeepers in the most 
voluble manner, entered into loud ex- 
planations of the most complicated sort, 
and utterly renounced replies in the na- 
tive language of the respondents, on 
the ground that they were “all bosh.” 
Sometimes interpreters were called in ; 
whom Mr. Meagles addressed in such 
idiomatic terms of speech as instantly 
to extinguish and shut up, — which 
made the matter worse. On a balance 
of the account, however, it may be 
doubted whether he lost much ; for, al- 
though he found no property, he found 
so many debts and various associations 
of discredit with the proper name which 
was the only word he made intelligible, 
that he was almost everywhere over- 
whelmed with injurious accusations. 
On no fewer than four occasions, the 
police were called in to receive denunci- 
ations of Mr. Meagles as a Knight of 
Industry, a good-for-nothing, and a 
thief; all of which opprobrious language 
he bore with the best temper (having no 
idea what it meant), and was in the most 
ignominious manner escorted to steam- 
boats and public carriages, to be got rid 
of, talking all the while, like a cheerful 
and fluent Briton as lie was, with moth- 
er under his arm. 

But in his own tongue, and in his own 
head, Mr. Meagles was a clear, shrewd, 
perseveringman. Whenhe had “worked 
round,” as he called it, to Paris in his 
pilgrimage, and had wholly failed in it 
so far, he was not disheartened. “ The 
nearer to England I follow him, you 
see, mother,” argued Mr. Meagles, 
“the nearer I am likely to come to the 
papers, whether they turn up or no. 
Because it is only reasonable to con- 
clude, that he would deposit them some- 
where they would be safe from people 
over in England, and where they would 
yet be accessible to himself, don’t you 
see.’ 

At Paris, Mr. Meagles found a letter 
from Little Dorrit, lying waiting for 
him ; in which she mentioned that she 
had been able to talk for a minute or 


470 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


\ 


two with Mr. Clennam, about this man 
who was no more ; and that when she 
told Mr. Clennam that his friend Mr. 
Meagles, who was on his way to see 
him, had an interest in ascertaining 
something about the man if he could, 
he had asked her to tell Mr. Meagles 
that he had been known to Miss Wade, 
then living in such a street at Calais. 

Oho ! ” said Mr. Meagles. 

As soon afterwards as might be, in 
those Diligence days, Mr. Meagles 
rang the cracked bell at the cracked 
gate, and it jarred open, and the peas- 
ant-woman stood in the dark doorway, 
saying, “ Ice-say ! Seer ! Who ? ” 
In acknowledgment of whose address, 
Mr. Meagles murmured to himself that 
there was some sense about these Ca- 
lais people, who really did know some- 
thing of what you and themselves were 
up to ; and returned, “ Miss Wade, my 
dear.” He was then shown into the 
presence of Miss Wade. 

“ It’s some time since we met,” said 
Mr. Meagles, clearing his throat. “ I 
hope you have been pretty well, Miss 
Wade ? ” 

Without hoping that he or anybody 
else had been pretty well, Miss Wade 
asked him to what she was indebted 
for the honor of seeing him again ? Mr. 
Meagles, in the mean while, glanced all 
round the room, without observing any- 
thing in the shape of a box. 

“Why, the truth is, Miss Wade,” 
said Mr. Meagles, in a comfortable, 
managing, not to say coaxing voice, “ it 
is possible that you may be able to 
throw a light upon a little something 
that is at present dark. Any unpleasant 
bygones between us are bygones, I 
hope. Can’t be helped now. You 
recollect my daughter ? Times change 
so ! A mother ! ” 

In his innocence, Mr. Meagles could 
not have struck a worse key-note. He 
paused for any expression of interest, 
but paused in vain. 

“ That is not the subject you wished 
to enter on ? ” she said, after a cold 
silence. 

“ No, no,” returned Mr. Meagles, 
— “ no. I thought your good-nature 
might — ” 

“I thought you knew,” she inter- 


rupted, with a smile, “ that my good- 
nature is not to be calculated upon.” 

“ Don’t say so,” said Mr. Meagles ; 
“ you do yourself an injustice. How- 
ever, to come to the point.” For he 
-was sensible of having gained nothing 
by approaching it in a roundabout way. 
“ I have heard from my friend Clen- 
nam, who, you will be sorry to hear, 
has been and still is very ill — ” 

He paused again, and again she was 
silent. 

“ — That you had some knowledge of 
one BJandois, lately killed in London 
by a vioient accident. Now, don’t mis- 
take me! I know it was a slight knowl- 
edge,” said Mr. Meagles, dexterously 
forestalling an angry interruption which 
he saw about to break. “ I am fully 
aware of that. It was a slight knowl- 
edge, I know. But the question is,” 
Mr. Meagles’s voice here became com- 
fortable again, “ did he, on his way to 
England last time, leave a box of papers, 
or a bundle of papers, or some papers 
or other in some receptacle or other — 
any papers — with you : begging you to 
allow him to leave them here for a short 
time, until he wanted them ? ” 

“ The question is ? ” she repeated. 
“Whose question is?” 

“Mine,” said Mr. Meagles. “And 
not only mine but Clennam’s question, 
and other people’s question. Now, I 
am sure,” continued Mr. Meagles, 
whose heart was overflowing with Pet, 
“ that you can’t have any unkind feeling 
towards my daughter ; it ’s impossible. 
Well ! It’s her question, too ; being 
one in which a particular friend of hers 
is nearly interested. So here I am, 
frankly to say that is the question, and 
to ask, Now, did he?” 

“ Upon my word,” she returned, “ I 
seem to be a mark for everybody who 
knew anything of a man I once in my 
life hired, and paid, and dismissed, to 
aim their questions at ! ” 

“ Now, don’t,” remonstrated Mr. 
Meagles, “ don’t ! Don’t take offence, 
because it ’s the plainest question in the 
world, and might be asked of any one. 
The documents I refer to were not his 
own, were wrongfully obtained, might 
at some time or other be troublesome to 
an innocent person to have in keeping, 


LITTLE DORRIT. ' 


47i 


and are sought by the people to whom 
they really belong. He passed through 
Calais going to London, and there were 
reasons why he should not take them 
with him then, why he should wish to 
be able to put his hand upon them 
readily, and why he should distrust 
leaving them with people of his own 
sort. Did he leave them here ? I 
declare if I knew how to avoid giving 
you offence, I would take any pains to 
do it. I put the question personally, 
but there ’s nothing personal in it. I 
might put it to any one ; I haye put it 
already to many people. Did he leave 
them here ? Did he leave anything 
here?” 

“ No.” 

“Then unfortunately, Miss Wade, 
you know nothing about them ? ” 

“ I know nothing about them. I 
have now answered your unaccountable 
question. He did not leave them here, 
and I know nothing about them.” 

“There 1” said Mr. Meagles, rising. 
“I am sorry for it ; that ’s over ; and I 
hope there is not much harm done. — 
Tattycoram well, Miss Wade?” 

“ Harriet well ? O yes 1 ” > 

“ I have put my foot in it again,” 
said Mr. Meagles, thus corrected. “ I 
can’t keep my foot out of it, here, it 
seems. Perhaps, if I had thought twice 
about it, I might never have given her 
the jingling name. But when one 
means to be good-natured and sportive 
with young people, one doesn’t think 
twice. Her old friend leaves a kind 
word for her, Miss Wade, if you should 
think proper to deliver it.” 

She said nothing as to that ; and Mr. 
Meagles, taking his honest face out of 
the dull room, where it shone like a 
sun, took it to the Hotel where he had 
left Mrs. Meagles, and where he made 
the report : “ Beaten, mother ; no ef- 
fects ! ” He took it next to the Lon- 
don Steam Packet, which sailed in the 
night ; and next to the Marshalsea. 

The faithful John w’as on duty, when 
Father and Mother Meagles presented 
themselves at the wicket towards night- 
fall. Miss Dorrit was not there then, 
he said ; but she had been there in the 
morning, and invariably came in the 
evening. Mr. Clennam was slowly 


mending ; and Maggy and Mrs. Plor- 
nish and Mr. Baptist took care of him 
by turns. Miss Dorrit was sure to 
come back that evening before the bell 
rang. There was the room the Mar- 
shal had lent her, up stairs, in which 
they could wait for her, if they pleased. 
Mistrustful that it might be hazardous 
to Arthur to see him without prepara- 
tion, Mr. Meagles accepted the offer ; 
and they were left shut up in the room, 
looking down through its barred win- 
dow into the jail. 

The cramped area of the prison had 
such an effect on Mrs. Meagles that she 
began to weep, and such an effect on 
Mr. Meagles that he began to gasp for 
air. He was walking up and down the 
room, panting, and making himself 
worse by laboriously fanning himself 
with his handkerchief, when he turned 
towards the opening door. 

“Eh? Good gracious!” said Mr. 
Meagles, “ this is not Miss Dorrit I 
Why, mother, look ! Tattycoram ! ” 

No other. And in Tattycoram ’s 
arms was an iron box some two feet 
square. Such a box had Affery Flint- 
winch seen in the first of her dreams, 
going out of the old house in the dead 
of the night under Double’s arm. 
This Tattycoram put on the ground at 
her old master’s feet ; this Tattycoram 
fell on her knees by, and beat her hands 
upon, crying half in exultation and half 
in despair, half in laughter and half in 
tears, “ Pardon, dear Master, take me 
back, dear Mistress, here it is ! ” 

“ Tatty ! ” exclaimed Mr. Meagles. 

“ What you wanted ! ” said Tattyco- 
ram. “ Here it is ! I was put in the 
next room not to see you. I heard you 
ask her about it, I heard her say she 
had n’t got it, I was there when he left 
it, and I took it at bedtime and brought 
it away. Here it is ! ” 

“ Why, my girl,” cried Mr. Meagles, 
more breathless than before, “ how did 
you come over ? ” 

“ I came in the boat with you. I was 
sitting wrapped up at the other end. 
When you took a coach at the wharf, I 
took another coach and followed you 
here. She never would have given it 
up, after what you had said to her about 
its being wanted; she would sooner 


472 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


have sunk it in the sea, or burnt it. 
But here it is ! ” 

The glow and rapture that the girl 
was in, with her “ Here it is ! ” 

“ She never wanted it to be left, I 
must say that for her ; but he left it, and 
I know well that after what you said, 
and after her denying it, she never would 
have given it up. But here it is 1 Dear 
Master, dear Mistress, take me back 
again, and give me back the dear old 
name ! Let this intercede for me. 
Here it is ! ” 

Father and Mother Meagles never 
deserved their names better, than when 
they took the headstrong foundling-girl 
into their protection again. 

“ O, I have been so wretched,” cried 
Tattycoram, weeping much more, af- 
ter that, than before, — “always so 
unhappy, and so repentant ! I was 
afraid of her, from the first time I ever 
saw her. I knew she had got a power 
over me, through understanding what 
was bad in me so well. It was a 
madness in me, and she could raise it 
whenever she liked. I used to think, 
when I got into that state, that people 
were all against me because of my first 
beginning ; and the kinder they were 
to me, the worse fault I found in them. 
I made it out that they triumphed 
above me, and that they wanted to 
make me envy them, when I know — 
when I even knew then, if I would — 
that they never thought of such a 
thing. And my beautiful young mis- 
tress not so happy as she ought to 
have been, and I gone away from her ! 
Such a brute and wretch as she musj. 
think me ! But you ’ll say a word to 
her for me, and ask her to be as for- 
giving as you two are? For I am not 
so bad as I was,” pleaded Tattyco- 
ram ; “ I am bad enough, but not so 
bad as I was, indeed. I have had Miss 
Wade before me all this time, as if 
it was my own self grown ripe, — turn- 
ing everything the wrong way, and 
twisting all good into evil. 1 have had 
her before me all this time, finding no 
pleasure in anything but in keeping me 
as miserable, suspicious, and torment- 
ing as herself. Not that she had much 
to do, to do that,” cried Tattycoram, 
in a closing great burst of distress, 


“for I was as bad as bad could be. 
I only mean to say, that, after what 
I have gone through, I hope I shall 
never be quite so bad again, and that 
I shall get better by very slow degrees. 
I ’ll try very hard. I won’t stop at 
five-and-twenty, sir. I ’ll count five- 
and-twenty hundred, five-and-twenty 
thousand ! ” 

Another opening of the door, and 
Tattycoram subsided, and Little Dor- 
rit came in, and Mr. Meagles with 
pride and joy produced the box, and 
her gentle face was lighted up with 
grateful happiness and joy. The secret 
was safe now ! She could keep her 
own part of it from him ; he should 
never know of her loss ; in time to 
come, he should know all that was of 
import to himself; but he should 
never know what concerned her only. 
That was all passed, all forgiven, all 
forgotten. 

“ Now, my dear Miss Dorrit,” said 
Mr. Meagles, “ I am a man of busi- 
ness, — or at least was, — and I am 
going to take my measures, promptly, 
in that character. Had I better see 
Arthur to-night?” 

“ I think not to-night. I will go to 
his room and ascertain how he is. But 
I think it will be better not to see 
him to-night.” 

“ I am much of your opinion, my 
dear,” said Mr. Meagles, “ and there- 
fore I have not been any nearer to 
him than this dismal room. Then I 
shall probably not see him for some 
little time to come. But I ’ll explain 
what I mean when you come back.” 

She left the room. Mr. Meagles, 
looking through the bars of the win- 
dow, saw her pass cut of the lodge 
below him into the prison yard. He 
said gently, “ Tattycoram, come to me 
a moment, my good girl.” 

She- went up to the window. 

“You see that young lady who was 
here just now, — that little, quiet, fragile 
figure passing along there, Tatty? 
Look. The people stand out of the 
way to let her go by. The men — see 
the poor, shabby fellow’s — pull off their 
hats to her quite politely, and now she 
glides in at that doorway. See her, 
Tattycoram ? ” 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


473 


“ Yes, sir.” 

“ I have heard tell, Tatty, that she 
was once regularly called the child of 
this place. She was born here, and 
lived here many years. I can’t breathe 
here. A doleful place, to be born and 
bred in, Tattycoram ? ” 

“ Yes, indeed, sir ! ” 

“ If she had constantly thought of 
herself, and settled with herself that 
everybody visited this place upon her, 
turned it against her, and cast it at 
her, she would have led an irritable 
and probably an useless existence. Yet 
I have heard tell, Tattycoram, that 
her young life has been one of active 
resignation, goodness, and noble ser- 
vice. Shall I tell you what I consider 
those eyes of hers, that were here just 
now, to have always looked at, to get 
that expression ? ” 

“Yes, if you please, sir.” 

“ Duty, Tattycoram. Begin it early, 
and do it well ; and there is no antece- 
dent to it, in any origin or station, that 
will tell against us with the Almighty, 
or with ourselves.” 

They remained at the window, moth- 
er joining them and pitying the prison- 
ers, until she was seen coming back. 
She was soon in the room, and recom- 
mended that Arthur, whom she had 
left calm and composed, should not be 
visited that night. 

“ Good ! ” said Mr. Meagles, cheer- 
ily. “I have not a doubt that J sbest. 

I shall trust my remembrances then, 
my sweet nurse, in your hands, and I 
well know they could n’t be in better. 

I am off again to-morrow morning.” 

Little Dorrit, surprised, asked him 
where. 

“ My dear,” said Mr. Meagles, “ I 
can’t live without breathing. This 
place has taken my breath away, and 
I shall never get it back again until 
Arthur is out of this place.” 

“ How is that a reason for going off 
again to-morrow morning?” 

“You shall understand,” said Mr. 
Meagles. “ To-night we three wall put 
up at a City Hotel. To-morrow morn- 
ing, mother and Tattycoram will go 
down to Twickenham, where Mrs. 
Tickit, sitting attended by Dr. Buchan 
in the parlor window, will think them a 


couple of ghosts ; and I shall go abroad 
again for Doyce. We must have Dan 
here. Now, I tell you, my love, it’s of 
no use wanting and planning and con- 
ditionally speculating, upon this and 
that and the other, at uncertain inter- 
vals and distances ; we must have 
Doyce here. I devote myself, at day- 
break to-morrow morning, to bringing 
Doyce here. It ’s nothing to me to go 
and find him. I ’m an old traveller, 
and all foreign languages and customs 
are alike to me, — I never understand 
anything about any of ’em. Therefore 
I can’t be put to any inconvenience. 
Go at once I must, it stands to reason ; 
because I can’t live without breathing 
freely ; and I can’t breathe freely, until 
Arthur is out of this Marshalsea. I 
am stifled at the present moment, and 
have scarcely breath enough to say this 
much, and to carry this precious box 
down stairs for you.” 

They got into the street as the bell 
began to ring, Mr. Meagles carrying 
the box. Little Dorrit had no convey- 
ance there, which rather surprised him. 
He called a coach for her, and she got 
into it, and he placed the box beside 
her when she was seated. In her joy 
and gratitude she kissed his hand. 

“ I don’t like that, my dear,” said 
Mr. Meagles. “ It goes against my 
feeling of what ’s right, that you should 
do homage to me> — at the Marshalsea 
Gate.” 

She bent forward, and kissed his 
cheek. 

“You remind me of the days,]’ said 
Mr. Meagles, suddenly . drooping, — 
“ but she ’s very fond of him, and hides 
his faults, and thinks that no one sees 
them, — and he certainly is well con- 
nected, and of a very good family ! ” 

It was the only comfort he had in the 
loss of his daughter, and if he made 
the most of it, wdio could blame him ? 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 

GONE. 

On a healthy autumn day, the Mar- 
shalsea prisoner, weak but otherwise 


474 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


restored, sat listening to a voice that 
read to him. On a healthy autumn 
day, when the golden fields had been 
reaped and ploughed again, when the 
summer fruits had ripened and v/aned, 
when the green perspectives of hops had 
been laid low by the busy pickers, when 
the apples clustering in the orchards 
were russet, and the berries of the 
mountain ash were crimson among the 
yellowing foliage. Already in the woods, 
glimpses of the hardy winter that was 
coming were to be caught through un- 
accustomed openings among the boughs 
where the prospect shone defined and 
clear, free from the bloom of the drowsy 
summer weather, which had rested on 
it as the bloom lies on the plum. So 
from the sea-shore the ocean was no 
longer to be seen lying asleep in the 
heat, but its thousand sparkling eyes 
were open, and its whole breadth was 
in joyful animation, from the cool sand 
on the beach to the little sails on the 
horizon, drifting away like autumn- 
tinted leaves that had drifted from the 
trees. 

Changeless and barren, looking ig- 
norantly at all the seasons with its fixed, 
pinched face of poverty and care, the 
prison had not a touch of any of these 
beauties on it. Blossom what would, 
its bricks and bars bore uniformly the 
same dead crop. Yet Clennam, listen- 
ing to the voice as it read to him, heard 
in it all that great Nature was doing, 
heard in it all the soothing songs she 
sings to man. At no mother’s knee 
but hers had he ever dwelt in his 
youth on hopeful promises, on playful 
fancies, on the harvests of tenderness 
and humility that lie hidden in the early 
fostered seeds of the imagination ; on 
the oaks of retreat from blighting winds, 
that have the germs of their strong roots 
in nursery acorns. But in the tones of 
the voice that read to him there were 
memories of an old feeling of such 
things, and echoes of every merciful 
and loving whisper that had ever stolen 
to him in his life. 

When the voice stopped, he put his 
hand over his eyes, murmuring that the 
light was strong upon them. 

Little Dorrit put the book by, and 
presently arose quietly to shade the 1 


window. Maggy sat at her needle-work 
in her old place. The light softened, 
Little Dorrit brought her chair closer 
to his side. 

“This will soon be over now, dear 
Mr. Clennam. Not only are Mr. 
Doyce’s letters to you so full of friend- 
ship and encouragement, but Mr. Rugg 
says his letters to him are so full of help, 
and that everybody (now a little anger 
is past) is so considerate, and speaks so 
well of you, that it will soon be over 
now.” 

“Dear girl. Dear heart. Good an- 
gel ! ” 

“ You praise me far too much. And 
yet it is such an exquisite pleasure 
to me to hear you speak so feelinglv, 
and to — and to see,” said Little Dorrit, 
raising her eyes to his, “ how deeply 
you mean it, that I cannot say Don’t ? ” 

He lifted her hand to his lips. 

“You have been here many, many 
times, when I have not seen you, Little 
Dorrit?” 

“Yes, I have been here sometimes 
when I have not come into the room.” 

“ Very often ? ” 

“ Rather often,” said Little Dorrit, 
timidly. 

“ Every day?” 

“ I think,” said Little Dorrit, after 
hesitating, “ that I have been here at 
least twice every day.” 

He might have released the little 
light hand, after fervently kissing it 
again, but that, with a very gentle 
lingering where it was, it seemed to 
court being retained. He took it in 
both of his, and it lay softly on his 
breast. 

“Dear Little Dorrit, it is not my 
imprisonment only that will soon be 
over. This sacrifice of you must be 
ended. We must learn to part again, 
and to take our different ways so wide 
asunder. You have not forgotten what 
we said together, when you came 
back ? ” 

“ O no, I have not forgotten it. But 
something has been — You feel quite 
strong to-day, don’t you?” 

“ Quite strong.” 

The hand he held crept up a little 
nearer to his face. 

“ Do you feel quite strong enough to 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


475 


know what a great fortune I have 
got?” 

“ I shall be very glad to be told. 
No fortune can be too great or good 
for Little Dorrit.” 

“ I have been anxiously waiting to 
tell you. I have been longing and 
longing to tell you. You are sure you 
will not take it? ” 

“ Never ! ” 

“You are quite sure you will not 
take half of it?” 

“ Never, dear Little Dorrit !” 

As she looked at him silently, there 
was something in her affectionate face 
that he did not quite comprehend ; 
something that could have broken into 
tears in a moment, and yet that was 
happy and proud. 

“You will be sorry to hear what I 
have to tell you about Fanny. Poor 
Fanny has lost everything. She has 
nothing left but her husband’s income. 
All that papa gave her when she mar- 
ried was lost as your money was lost. 
It was in the same hands, and it is all 
gone.” 

Arthur was -more shocked than sur- 
prised to hear it. “ 1 had hoped it 
might not be so bad,” he said ; “but I 
had feared a heavy loss there, knowing 
the connection between her husband 
and the defaulter.” 

“Yes. It is all gone. I am very 
sorry for Fanny; very, very, very sorry 
for poor Fanny. My poor brother, 
too ! ” 

“ Had he property in the same 
hands? ” 

“Yes! And it is all gone. — How 
much do you think my own great for- 
tune is? ” 

As Arthur looked at her inquiringly, 
with a new apprehension on him, she 
withdrew her hand, and laid her face 
dow'n on the spot where it had rested. 

“ I have nothing in the world. I am 
as poor as when I lived here. When 
papa came over to England, he con- 
fided everything he had to the same 
hands, and it is all swept away. O my 
dearest and best, are you quite sure you 
will not share my fortune with me 
now? ” 

Locked in his arms, held to his heart, 
with his manly tears upon her own 


cheek, she drew the slight hand round 
his neck, and clasped it in its fellow- 
hand. 

“ Never to part, my dearest Arthur; 
never any more until the last ! I never 
was rich before, I never was proud be- 
fore, I never was happy before. I am 
rich in being taken by you, I am proud 
in having been resigned by you, I am 
happy in being with you in this prison, 
as I should be happy in coming back 
to it with you, if it should be the will 
of God, and comforting and serving you 
with all my love and truth. I am yours 
anywhere, everywhere ! I love you 
dearly ! I would rather pass my life 
here with you, and go out daily, work- 
ing for our bread, than I would have 
the greatest fortune that ever was told, 
and be the greatest lady that ever was 
honored. O, if poor papa may only 
know how blest at last my heart is, in 
this room where he suffered for so many 
years ! ” 

Maggy had of course been staring 
from the first, and had of course been 
crying her eyes out, long before this. 
Maggy was now so overjoyed that, after 
hugging her little mother with ali her 
might, she went dowm stairs like a clog- 
hornpipe to find somebody or other to 
w'hom to impart her gladness. Whom 
should Maggy meet but Flora and Mr. 
F.’s Aunt opportunely coming in? And 
whom else, as a consequence of that 
meeting, should Little Dorrit find wait- 
ing for herself, when, a good tw'O or 
three hours afterwards, she went out? 

Flora’s eyes were a little red, and she 
seemed rather out of spirits. Mr. F.’s 
Aunt was so stiffened that she had the 
appearance of being past bending, by 
any means short of powerful mechan- 
ical pressure. Her bonnet was cocked 
up behind in a terrific manner; and 
her stony reticule was as rigid as if it 
had been petrified by the Gorgon’s 
head, and had got it at that moment 
inside. With these imposing attributes, 
Mr. F.’s Aunt, publicly seated on the 
steps of the Mai^hal’s official residence, 
had been for the two or three hours in 
question a great boon to the younger 
inhabitants of the Borough, w-hose sal- 
lies of humor she had considerably 


476 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


flushed herself by resenting, at the 
point of her umbrella from time to 
time. 

“ Painfully aware, Miss Dorrit, I am 
sure,” said Flora, “that to propose an 
adjournment to any place to one so far 
removed by fortune and so courted and 
caressed by the best society must ever 
appear intruding even if not a pie-shop 
far below your present sphere and a 
back-parlor though a civil man but if 
for the sake of Arthur — cannot over- 
come it more improper now than ever 
late Doyce and Clennam — one last 
remark I might wish to make one last 
explanation I might wish to offer per- 
haps your good- nature might excuse 
under pretence of three kidney ones the 
humble place of conversation.” 

Rightly interpreting this rather ob- 
scure speech, Little Dorrit returned 
that she was quite at Flora’s disposition. 
Flora accordingly led the. way across 
the road to the pie-shop in question ; 
Mr. F.’s Aunt stalking across in the 
rear, and putting herself in the way of 
being run over, with a perseverance 
worthy of a better cause. 

When the “three kidney ones,” 
which were to be a blind to the conver- 
sation, were set before them on three 
little tin platters, each kidney one orna- 
mented with a hole at the top, into 
which the civil man poured hot gravy 
out of a spouted can as if he were feed- 
ing three lamps, Flora took out her 
pocket-handkerchief. 

“ If Fancy’s fair dreams,” she began, 
“ have ever pictured that when Arthur 
— cannot overcome it pray excuse me — 
was restored to freedom even a pie as 
far from flaky as the present and so de- 
ficient in kidney as to be in that respect 
like a minced nutmeg might not prove 
unacceptable if offered by the hand of 
true regard such visions have forever 
fled and all is cancelled but being aware 
that tenderer relations are in contempla- 
tion beg to state that I heartily wish 
well to both and find no fault with 
either not the least, it may be withering 
to know that ere the hand of Time had 
made me much less slim than formerly 
and dreadfully red on the slightest ex- 
ertion particularly after eating I well 
know when it takes the form of a rash it 


might have been and was not through 
the interruption of parents and mental 
torpor succeeded until the mysterious 
clew was held by Mr. F. still I would 
not be ungenerous to either and I heart- 
ily wish well to both.” 

Little Dorrit took her hand, and 
thanked her for all her old kindness. 

“ Call it not kindness,” returned 
Flora, giving her an honest kiss, “ for 
you always were the best and dearest 
little thing that ever was if I may take 
the liberty and even in a money point 
of view a saving being Conscience itself 
though I must add much more agree- 
able than mine ever was to me for 
though not I hope more burdened than 
other people’s yet I have always found 
it far readier to make one uncomfortable 
than comfortable and evidently taking 
a greater pleasure in doing it but I am 
wandering, one hope I wish to express 
ere yet the closing scene draws in and 
it is that I do trust for the sake of old 
times and old sincerity that Arthtir will 
know that I did n’t desert him in his 
misfortunes but that I came backwards 
and forwards constantly to ask if I could 
do anything for him and that I sat in 
the pie-shop where they very civilly 
fetched something warm in a tumbler 
from the hotel and really very nice hours 
after hours to keep him company over 
the way without his knowing it.” 

Flora really had tears in her eyes 
now, and they showed her to great ad- 
vantage. 

“ Over and above which,” said Flora, 
“I earnestly beg you as the dearest 
thing that ever was if you ’ll still excuse 
the familiarity from one who moves in 
very different circles to let Arthur un- 
derstand that I don’t know after all 
whether it was n’t all nonsense between 
us though pleasant at the time and try- - 
ing too and certainly Mr. F. did work 
a change and the spell being broken 
nothing could be expected to take place 
vvithout weaving it afresh which various 
circumstances have combined to prevent 
of which perhaps not the least powerful 
was that it was not to be, I am not pre- 
pared to say that if it had been agree- 
able to Arthur and had brought itself 
about naturally in the first instance I 
should not have been very glad being of 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


477 


a lively disposition and moped at home 
where papa undoubtedly is the most 
aggravating of his sex and not improved 
since having been cut down by the hand 
of the Incendiary into something of 
which I never saw the counterpart in all 
my life but jealousy is not my character 
nor ill-will though many faults.” 

Without having been able closely to 
follow Mrs. Finching through this laby- 
rinth, Little Dorrit understood its pur- 
pose, and cordially accepted the trust. 

“ The withered chaplet my dear,” 
said Flora, with great enjoyment, “ is 
then perished the column is crumbled 
and the pyramid is standing upside 
down upon its what’s-his-name call it 
not giddiness call it not weakness call it 
not folly I must now retire into privacy 
and look upon the ashes of departed 
joys no more but taking the further lib- 
erty of paying for the pastry which has 
formed the humble pretext of our inter- 
view will forever say Adieu ! ” 

Mr. F.’s Aunt, who had eaten her 
ie with great solemnity, and who had 
een elaborating some grievous scheme 
of injury in her mind, since her first as- 
sumption of that public position on the 
Marshal’s steps, took the present op- 
portunity of addressing the following 
Sibyllic apostrophe to the relict of her 
late nephew. 

“ Bring him for’ard, and I ’ll chuck 
him out o’ winder ! ” 

Flora tried in vain to soothe the ex- 
cellent woman, by explaining that they 
were going home to dinner. Mr. F.’s 
Aunt persisted in replying, “ Bring him 
for’ard, and I ’ll chuck him out o’ win- 
der ! ” Having reiterated this demand 
an immense number of times, with a sus- 
tained glare of defiance at Little Dorrit, 
Mr. F.’s Aunt folded her arms, and sat 
down in the corner of the pie-shop par- 
lor ; steadfastly refusing to budge until 
such time as “he” should have been 
“brought for’ard,” and the chucking 
portion of his destiny accomplished. 

In this condition of things, Flora con- 
fided to Little Dorrit that she had not 
seen Mr. F.’s Aunt so full of life and 
character for weeks ; that she would find 
it necessary to remain there “ hours per- 
haps,” until the inexorable old lady 
could be softened ; and that she could 


manage her best alone. They parted, 
therefore, in the friendliest manner, and 
with the kindest feeling on both sides. 

Mr. F.’s Aunt holding out like a grim 
fortress, and Flora becoming in need 
of refreshment, a messenger was de- 
spatched to the hotel for the tumbler 
already glanced at, which was after- 
wards replenished. With the aid of 
its contents, a newspaper, and some 
skimming of the cream of the pie- 
stock, Flora got through the remainder 
of the day in perfect good-humor ; 
though occasionally embarrassed by 
the consequences of an idle rumor 
which circulated among the credulous 
infants of the neighborhood, to the ef- 
fect that an old lady had sold herself 
to the pie-shop, to be made up, and 
was then sitting in the pie-shop parlor, 
declining to complete her contract. 
This attracted so many young per- 
sons of both sexes, and, when the 
shades of evening began to fall, occa- 
sioned so much interruption to the 
business, that the merchant became 
very pressing in his proposals that Mr. 
F.’s Aunt should be removed. A con- 
veyance was accordingly brought to 
the door, which, by the joint efforts of 
the merchant and Flora, this remark- 
able woman was at last induced to en- 
ter ; though not without even then 
putting her head out of the window, 
and demanding to have him “brought 
for’ard ” for the purpose originally 
mentioned. As she was observed at 
this time to direct baleful glances to- 
wards the Marshalsea, it has been sup- 
posed that this admirably consistent 
female intended by “ him” Arthur 
Clennam. This, however, is mere 
speculation ; who the person was who, 
for the satisfaction of Mr. F.’s Aunt’s 
mind, ought to have been brought for- 
ward and never was brought forward, 
will never be positively known. 

The autumn days went on, and Little 
Dorrit never came to the Marshalsea 
now and went away without seeing him. 
No, no, no. 

One morning, as Arthur listened for 
the light feet that every morning ascend- 
ed winged to his heart, bringing the 
heavenly brightness of a new love in- 


478 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


to the room where the old love had 
wrought so hard and been so true ; 
one morning, as he listened, he heard 
her coming, not alone. 

“ Dear Arthur,” said her delighted 
voice outside the door, “ I have some 
one here. May I bring some one in ? ” 

He had thought from the tread there 
were two with her. He answered 
“ Yes,” and she came in with Mr. 
Meagles. Sun-browned and jolly Mr. 
Meagles looked, and he opened his 
arms and folded Arthur in them, like 
a sun-browned and jolly father. 

“Now, I am all right,” said Mr. Mea- 
gles, after a minute or 50. “ Now, it’s 

over. Arthur, my dear fellow, confess 
at once that you expected me before.” 

“I did,” said Arthur; “but Amy 
told me — ” 

“ Little Dorrit. Never any other 
name.” (It was she who whispered it.) 

“ — But my Little Dorrit told me 
that, without asking for any further 
explanation, I was not to expect you 
until I saw you.” 

“ And now you see me, my boy,” said 
Mr. Meagles, shaking him by the hand 
stoutly ; “ and now you shall have any 
explanation and every explanation. 
The fact is, I was here, — came 
straight to you from the Allongers and 
Marshongers, or I should be ashamed 
to look you in the face this day, — 
but you were not in company trim at 
the moment, and I had to start off 
again to catch Doyce.” 

“ Poor Doyce ! ” sighed Arthur. 

“ Don’t call him names that he don’t 
deserve,” said Mr. Meagles. “He's 
not poor ; he ’s doing well enough. 
Doyce is a wonderful fellow over there. 
I assure you, he is making out his case 
like a house afire. He has fallen on 
his legs, has Dan. Where they don’t 
want things done and find a man to do 
’em, that man ’s off his legs ; but 
where they do want things done and 
find a man to do ’em, that man ’s on 
his legs. You won’t have occasion to 
trouble the Circumlocution Office any 
more. Let me tell you, Dan has done 
without ’em ! ” 

“ What a load you take from my 
mind ! ” cried Arthur. “ What happi- 
ness you give me ! ” 


“Happinesj?” retorted Mr. Mea- 
gles. “ Don’t talk about happiness till 
you see Dan. I assure you, Dan is di- 
recting works and executing labors over 
yonder, that it would make your hair 
stand on end to look at. He ’s no pub- 
lic offender, bless you, now ! He ’s 
medalled and ribboned, and starred, and 
crossed, and I-don’t-know-what-all’d 
like a born nobleman. But we mustn’t 
talk about that over here.” 

“Why not?” 

“ O egad ! ” said Mr. Meagles, shak- 
ing his head very seriously, “he must 
hide all those things under lock and key 
when he comes over here. They won’t 
do, over here. In that particular, Bri- 
tannia is a Britannia in the Manger, — 
won’t give her children such distinctions 
herself, and won’t allow them to be 
seen, when they are given by other 
countries. No, no, Dan!” said Mr. 
Meagles, shaking his head again. 
“ That won’t do here ! ” 

“ If you had brought me (except for 
Doyce’s sake) twice what I have lost,” 
cried Arthur, “you would not have giv- 
en me the pleasure that you give me in 
this news.” 

“ Why, of course, of course,” assented 
Mr. Meagles. “ Of course I know 
that, my good fellow, and therefore I 
come out with it in the first burst. 
Now, to go back, about catching Doyce. 
I caught Doyce. Ran against him, 
among a lot of those dirty brown dogs 
in women’s nightcaps a great deal too 
big for ’em, calling themselves Arabs 
and all sorts of incoherent races. You 
know ’em ! Well ! He was coming 
straight to me, and I was going straight 
to him, and so we came back together.” 

“ Doyce in England ! ” exclaimed 
Arthur. 

“ There ! ” said Mr. Meagles, throw- 
ing open his arms. “ I am the worst 
man in the world to manage a thing of 
this sort. I don’t know what I should 
have done if I had been in the diplo- 
matic line — right, perhaps ! The long 
and the short of it is, Arthur, we have 
both been in England this fortnight. 
And if you go on to ask where Doyce is 
at the present moment, why, my plain 
answer is, — here he is ! And now I 
can breathe again, at last ! ” 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


479 


Doyce darted in from behind the 
door, caught Arthur by both hands, and 
said the rest for himself. 

“There are only three branches of 
my subject, my dear Clennam,” said 
Doyce, proceeding to mould them sev- 
erally, with his plastic thumb on the 
palm of his hand, “ and they ’re soon 
disposed of. First, not a word more 
from you about the past. There was 
an error in your calculations. I know 
what that is. It affects the whole ma- 
chine, and failure is the consequence. 
You will profit by the failure, and will 
avoid it another time. I have done a 
similar thing myself, in construction, 
often. Every failure teaches a man 
something, if he will learn ; and you are 
too sensible a man not to learn from 
this failure. So much for firstly. Sec- 
ondly. I was sorry ymu should have 
taken it so heavily to heart, and re- 
proached yourself so severely ; I was 
travelling home night and day to put 
matters right, with the assistance of our 
friend, when I fell in with our friend as 
he has informed you. Thirdly. We 
two agreed, that, after what you had 
undergone, after your distress of mind, 
and after your illness, it would be a 
pleasant surprise if we could so far keep 
quiet as to get things perfectly arranged 
without your knowledge, and then come 
and say that all the affairs were smooth, 
that everything was right, that the bus- 
iness stood in greater want of you than 
ever it did, and that a new and pros- 
perous career was opened before you 
and me as partners. That ’s Thirdly. 
But you know we always make an al- 
lowance for friction, and so I have re- 
served space to close in. My dear 
Clennam, I thoroughly confide in you ; 
you have it in your power to be quite 
as useful to me, as I have, or have had, 
it in my power to be useful to you ; 
your old place awaits you, and wants 
you very much ; there is nothing to de- 
tain you here one half-hour longer.” 

There was silence, which was not 
broken until Arthur had stood for some 
time at the window with his back to- 
wards them, and until his little wife that 
was to be had gone to him and stayed 
by him. 

“ I made a remark a little while ago,” 


said Daniel Doyce then, “which I am 
inclined to think was an incorrect one. 
I said there was nothing to detain you 
here, Clennam, half an hour longer. 
Am I mistaken in supposing that you 
would rather not leave here till to-nior- 
row morning? Do I know, without be- 
ing very wise, where you would like to 
go direct from these walls and from this 
room? ” 

“You do,” returned Arthur. “It 
has been our cherished purpose.” 

“ Very well ! ” said Doyce. “ Then, 
if this young lady will do me the honor 
of regarding me for four-and-twenty 
hours in the light of a father, and will 
take a ride with me now towards Saint 
Paul’s Churchyard, I dare say I know 
what we want to get there.” 

Little Dorrit and he went out togeth- 
er soon afterwards, and Mr. Meagles 
lingered behind to say a word to his 
friend. 

“ I think, Arthur, you will not want 
mother and me in the morning and we 
will keep away. It might set mother 
thinking about Pet ; she ’s a soft-heart- 
ed woman. She ’s best at the cottage, 
and I ’ll stay there and keep her 
company.” 

With that they parted for the time. 
And the day ended, and the night end- 
ed, and the morning came, and Little 
Dorrit, simply dressed as usual, and 
having no one with her but Maggy, 
came into the prison with the sunshine. 
The poor room was a happy room that 
morning. Where in the world was there 
a room so full of quiet joy ! 

“ My dear love,” said Arthur. 
“ Why does Maggy light the fire ? We 
shall be gone directly.” 

“ I asked her to do it. I have taken 
such an odd fancy. I want you to burn 
something for me.” 

“What?” 

“ Only this folded paper. If you will 
put it in the fire with your own hand, 
just as it is, my fancy will be gratified.” 

“ Superstitious, darling Little Dorrit? 
Is it a charm ? ” 

“ It is anything you like best, my 
own,” she answered,* laughing with glis- 
tening eyes and standing on tiptoe to 
kiss him* “ if you will only humor me 
when the fire burns up.” 


4S0 


LITTLE DORRIT. 


So they stood before the fire, waiting ; 
Clennam with his arm about her waist, 
and the fire shining, as fire in that same 
place had often shone, in Little Dorrit’s 
eyes. “ Is it bright enough now ? ” 
%;aid Arthur. “ Quite bright enough 
now,” said Little Dorrit. “ Does the 
charm want any words to be said ? ” 
asked’ Arthur, as he held the paper over 
the flame. “ You can say (if you don’t 
mind), ‘ I love you ! ’ ” answered Little 
Dorrit. So he said it, and the paper 
burned away. 

They passed very quietly along the 
yard ; for no one was there, _ though 
many heads were stealthily peeping from 
the windows. Only one face, familiar 
of old, was in the lodge. When they 
had both accosted it, and spoken many 
kind words, Little Dorrit turned back 
one last time with her hand stretched 
out, saying, 4 ‘ Good by, good John ! I 
hope you will live very happy, dear ! ” 

Then they went up the steps of the 
neighboring Saint George’s Church, 
and w'ent up to the altar, where Daniel 
Doyce was waiting in his paternal char- 
acter. And there w'as Little Dorrit’s 
old friend who had given her the Burial 
Register for a pillowy full of admira- 
tion that she should come back to them 
to be married, after all. 

And they were married, with the sun 
shining on them through the painted 
figure of our Saviour on the window 7 . 
And they went into the very room where 
Little Dorrit had slumbered after her 
party, to sign the Marriage Register. 
And there Mr. Pancks (destined to be 
chief clerk to Doyce and Clennam, and 
afterwards partner in the house), sink- 
ing the Incendiary in the peaceful 
friend, looked in at the door to see it 
done, with Flora gallantly supported on 
one arm and Maggy, on the other, and 
a background of John Chivery and 
father, and other turnkeys, who had run 
round for the moment, deserting the 
parent Marshalsea for its happy child. 


4 > 

Nor had Flora the leas^ signs of seclu- 
sion upon her, notwithstanding her re- 
cent declaration ; but, on the contrary, 
was wonderfully smart, and enjoyed the 
ceremonies mightily, though in a flut- 
tered way. 

Little Dorrit’s old friend held the ink- 
stand as she signed her name, and the 
clerk paused in taking off the good cler- 
gyman’s surplice, and all the witnesses 
looked on with special interest. “For, 
you see,” said Little Dorrit’s old friend, 
“ this young lady is one of our curiosi- 
ties, and has come now to the thi^id vol- 
ume of our Registers. Her birth is in 
what I call the first volume ; she lay 
asleep on this very floor, with her pret- 
ty head on what I call the second vol- 
ume : and she ’s now a writing her little 
name, as a bride, in what I call the third 
volume.” 

They all gave place when the signing 
w r as done, and Little Dorrit and her 
husband walked out of the church 
alone. They paused for a moment on 
the steps of the portico, looking at the 
fresh perspective of the street in the 
autumn morning sun’s bright rays, and 
then w r ent dowm. 

W ent down into a modest life of use- 
fulness and happiness. Went down to 
give a mother’s care, in the fulness of 
time, to Fanny’s neglected children no 
less than to their own, and to leave that 
lady going into Society forever and a 
day. Went dow n to give a tender nurse 
and friend to Tip for some few' years, 
who was never vexed by the great ex- 
actions he made of her, in return for the 
riches he might have given her if he 
had ever had them, and who lovingly 
closed his eyes upon the Marshalsea 
and all its blighted fruits. They went 
quietly dow-n into the roaring streets, 
inseparable and blessed ; and as they 
passed along in sunshine and shade, the 
noisy and the eager, and the arrogant and 
the frow'ard and the vain, fretted, and 
chafed, and made their usual uproar. 


THE END. 


Cambridge : Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 













































































































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